By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
ELLIS — A new fiscal year has begun for area school districts and the Ellis USD 388 Board of Education used the opportunity to look ahead to a year filled with potential while reflecting on last year.
Opening the meeting, the board selected leadership for the year.
Randy Honas was unanimously voted to serve as president of the board, a role he served in during the last year.
Brian Shannon was unanimously voted to serve as vice-president.
Along with the board leadership, the board unanimously approved Connie Waldschmidt to serve as board clerk, Theresa Thomas as deputy clerk and Linda Pfeifer as board treasurer.
The board next heard a bond update from new Superintendent Janice Wilson.
"There has been moving and shaking like you wouldn't believe," Wilson said.
She said a town hall meeting schedule had been set, and an information booth was planned for the Ellis Jr. Free Fair.
"We have speakers that will be at several other places," Wilson said.
As the meeting and discussions continue she said a question and answer document was being compiled, noting a website for the bond issue is in the works.
"So if you have questions, you can take questions to the website," Wilson said. "And then we will have a facilitator that will work on answering them."
Additional work to inform the public about the bond issue is also underway, including a Facebook page, signs, shirts and flyers.
As these efforts continue, she said she had heard positive feedback from the community.
"Everybody has done a great job," Wilson said.
"It will start to get really active in probably about two weeks," Honas said. "We'll start seeing stuff come out, as far as sort of literature and some of that stuff. ... The first part of August is ... the first public meeting. So that's kind of a start."
He added the bond committee has been very active and has done a lot so far.
"We titled it Care for Kids," said board member Cindy Hertel. "Jared (Schiel) came up with the logo, so that's been developed, and we'll be utilizing that on our messaging."
As the work to spread information about the bond issues continues by the committee, Honas noted the next few weeks will be critical.
As the board during the meeting considered the future, they also looked back at the results of a survey from last year.
"This year, the participation of the climate survey was 56 responses," Wilson said.
Last year, around 70 surveys were collected.
"So we've dropped a little bit in the participation," Wilson said.
Looking back at the previous survey, she said the results were similar to last year in many regards.
She said district communications were ranked highly, as well as staff availability and student extracurricular activities.
But as school resumes in August, she said the survey highlighted the need to look at relationships and student social and emotional needs.
"Those are some of the areas that were not as strong," Wilson said.
Honas shared his concern from the survey showing that 30 percent of respondents disagreed that the district welcomes parent input, and 29 percent disagreed the district takes parents' concerns seriously.
"I don't know where that's coming from," Honas said. "But I mean ... it's been at 80 percent. It was over 20 percent. So, I don't know if that's a communication thing or just the perception."
Schiel noted that with the low survey return rate and some respondents who marked everything about the district negatively, the result might not truly reflect the opinions of most parents.
"We have 56 responses. If you have 12 to 16 people that are going to answer it negatively, it's going to skew results," he said.