By Kalvin D. Perron
Staff Reporter
BAY MILLS - The Bay Mills Ojibwe Charter School Board of Directors met on Sept. 12, for a regularly scheduled board meeting. Board member Anne Belleau was absent.
Mosaica Regional Vice President Bill Ignatowski said he had been looking at the school's food service and into the possibility of catering for the school, but had come up empty handed. He added that if the board knew anyone who could provide the service to have them contact the school. However, state laws say that anyone interested in providing the service can not cook out of their home, he said. In addition to streamlining the different roles people in the kitchen will play, the food service budget will have from $15,000 to $20,000 slashed from its budget. Simple things, such as putting slides on the food cart and combining responsibilities of kitchen workers, will help cut down on man hours, he said.
Ignatowski advised the board to take a serious look at next year's preliminary budget, especially the projected $128,932 deficit. The board needs to find a way to reduce that figure to a deficit of $80,000 to $85,000, he said. Since the budget is driven by enrollment, he advised the board to make a concerted effort to build enrollment and to decide where budget cuts could be made. The board agreed to set up a special meeting to go over the budget.
Board member Aaron Tadgerson said he was concerned with the way he felt Mosaica had been handling the grant writing process for the school. The larger grants received by OCS were all initiated by the board, he said. Due to the fact that OCS has a high population of Native American students and students from single parent households, he said there should be more grant monies available for the school. Instead, Tadgerson said that he feels like Mosaica is not actively trying to receive the different grants. Ignatowski assured Tadgerson that Mosaica would explore any and all grant opportunities that could be attained by the school.
In the CAO report, Ralph Crosslin addressed the declining enrollment at the charter school, which has been hovering around the 110 mark since school started. Although the number is beginning to stabilize, the declining enrollment is very disappointing, he said. Crosslin said many factors could be attributed to why students are leaving, such as, quite simply, families moving and disciplinary problems. Although OCS cannot stop a student from moving, they can crack down on the disciplinary problems, he said. Crosslin told the board that students are not getting away with things that they got away with last year. He added that the board should not be surprised if he asks for the long-term suspension or expulsion of one, two, or even three students. Although the school is not actively looking for reasons to suspend or expel students, Crosslin said that it is almost inevitable that it will happen.
Crosslin informed the board that the school received $7,000 in supplementary impact aid for making ramps for wheel-chair accessibility. While the bulk of the money will be used to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the remaining funds will be used for the acquisition of mulch and black dirt and the planting of grass seed on the playground.
A group of concerned mothers approached the board seeking an inquiry into why students were leaving the first-grade. Since the beginning of the school year, eight to nine students have left for Brimley, the mothers told the board. Crosslin assured the board he would investigate the matter.
The next school board meeting will be Oct. 10, at 7 p.m., at the OCS cafeteria.
