School Board hears audit report

Superintendent talks about program to prevent students drop-outs

Posted

HURON — The Huron School Board of Education held its regular bi-weekly meeting, Monday evening in the Instructional Planning Center.
In reports to the board, an audit report for the 2016-17 school year was given by a representative from ELO CPA LLC, Rebecca Odegaar, who was the head auditor in charge of the project.
“The Huron School District complied in all material respects with the types of compliance requirements,” said Odegaar. “We had no material weaknesses noted. Everything was presented as it should have been.”
Superintendent Terry Nebelsick talked about a program that is being implemented with the Department of Education, designed to work toward drop-out prevention, plus give students more skills and opportunities for college experience, internships and success.
“I serve on a committee that’s working with the Department of Education. We are talking about possible different badges that people could earn and that has morphed now into a program that’s going to the Governor’s desk for review,” explained Nebelsick. “It will be modeled after the teacher certification, where teachers get their certificate and then a list of endorsements. There will be a High School Diploma, that everyone has to earn, which will be approved by the ESSA nationally, then in addition to that there will be general post preparatory endorsements.”

The endorsements will include career preparation to work toward internships with businesses and high level college preparation for scholarship opportunities.
“I look forward to that coming together when the state Board of Educational Standards meets this spring,” said Nebelsick.  
Lori Wehlander came to the board with a Medicaid License Agreement,which was approved, for Medicaid billing services to assist with the increase of Medicaid over the past few years.
“I am looking to approve a contract with a group that would do our Medicaid billing for us,” Wehlander explained. “We have a large amount of Medicaid now, it has increased rapidly over the past few years.”
Nebelsick explained, “We have reviewed this and our Business Manager Kelly Christopherson has been involved in this process to make sure that it was a valid need for what we need to do to handle all of these.”
There were many successes in the district to celebrate at Monday’s meeting, which included the Huron School District Kitchen and Food Service Teams scoring 100 percent in health inspections. Destination Imagination teams will advance to the State Competition next month, and many more student accomplishments, which can all be viewed on the Huron School District website.
“We have a long list of congratulations this time around, we ask that these be sent into our office,” the Superintendent explained. “We like to celebrate all the different things that our young people and our staff are working on.”
In other business, the consent agenda showed there were nine grant applications, the rehiring of administrators for the coming school year, plus three new hires, one contract and seven resignations, all of which were approved in one motion.
The Huron School Board will meet again at 5:30 p.m. Monday, March 26, in the instructional planning center.