The Webster City Board of Education approved sharing a communications position with the city of Webster City and also approved forming a trap shooting team as an official FFA activity during its meeting on Monday night.

Both issues were addressed during Superintendent Matt Berninghaus’ report and voted on later in the meeting.

The trap shooting team would be associated with the Boone Valley Isaak Walton League. This would be self-funded through the FFA. It was assured that this would not impact school insurance rates and no transportation will be needed to participate with the virtual meets planned.

School board members questioned where the firearms would be stored. This, Berninghaus said, would be something worked out yet with the Isaak Walton League. No firearms will be allowed on school property, so students would not be allowed to store their firearms in their vehicles.

The second item voted on during the meeting was sharing a job with the City of Webster City. Berninghaus explained that sharing a communication person with the City of Webster City would replace the existing contract with the Donovan Group. He noted that this would take some work off the administration in each of the schools, and felt there would be better communication throughout the community.

The one critical service he felt that the Donovan group offered, is crisis management advice. He explained that when the school would have to deal with the death of a student, dealing with the notification to both families and the community was very helpful and handled well. But, he said this particular service will still be available through the Iowa Education Association, as the Donovan group is under contract with them.

The Webster City Board of Education had several lengthy presentations to the board when administrators from each of the schools explained their process to deal with behavioral issues.

Starting with the elementary schools, the teachers are starting the school year with teaching students and modeling appropriate behavior, what the expectations are of the way they behave while at school, in the playground and on buses, etc.

They are also explaining the consequences of inappropriate behaviour.

This same process of reminding students how to behave at school is refreshed after long breaks during the school year. As students get into the different levels of middle school and high school, a similar process is repeated.

Each of the schools reported a reduction in behavioral problems.

Berninghaus then talked to the board about the possibilities of consolidating the schools, putting all the students of a particular grade together within one or two buildings. For example, all the kindergarten through first grades might attend Pleasantview school, while second- and third-grade students might attend Sunset Heights.

All the current classrooms are necessary to provide this type of arrangement, and would include the Northeast Hamilton school.

Board members questioned how the teachers and parents would feel about the arrangement. This is a first step in talking through how this might be managed and the benefits and downfalls will be looked at more closely in the future.