Charles City school board gets technology and finance reports

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Community School Board talked technology and finance during its regular meeting on Monday, March 18.

Technology Director April Hanson was at the meeting to walk the board through a presentation going over all the different ways the district utilizes technology, both in daily operations and as an educational tool.

The technology department, consisting of Hanson and Technology Assistant John Carpenter, works full time operating the district’s network. Much more than just maintaining the school’s computer hardware and software in the various school buildings, the technology department touches nearly every area of the district. The district’s copy machines, door readers, more than 100 security cameras, and the entire phone service all run through the school’s network.

Maintaining this network continues through the summer months, they said. Just as teachers work through the summer with professional development and curriculum planning in between school years, the technology department stays available to keep the technology they use operational.

“We still have support needed year around,” said Hanson.

On the education side, Hanson and Carpenter work to install and maintain the media devices used in classrooms across the district, such as projectors and televisions.

“In the last four years, we had 150 learning stations set up,” said Hanson.

They also spend a good portion of their time making sure students have access to their Chromebooks, troubleshooting them and making repairs when they are damaged. The school district is now fully one-to-one for students and the laptop computers, with a stock of reserve devices available in the event a student needs one.

Also reporting to the school board was Director of Finance Calli Boeckmann, who updated the board on the work she has been doing to clean up the district’s finances.

Since coming on board last year, Boeckmann has been untangling the district’s unwieldy financial record-keeping, from whittling down the number of bank accounts and credit cards the district had to correcting errors with employee contracts and pay codes.

Boeckmann also found that the district has been overpaying its bond payments and health insurance, and corrected those issues, saving the district $70,000.

When asked by the board why these issues weren’t picked up by prior audits, Boeckmann reminded the board that the auditing service for the 2022 fiscal year was more than six months overdue with its report and the school’s contract with the firm had been terminated.

In similar financial matters, the board heard from Medicaid Coordinator Lacey Zirbel, who gave the board a report on the different Medicaid qualifying services that the district provides for students and the process of getting the district reimbursed for those services.

Last year, the district was reimbursed for $1.2 million in Medicaid services and, as of February, the school currently submits claims for 74 students each month.

Having worked to develop internal submission and record keeping procedures for the district, Zirbel recommended to the board that the district end its contract with its current Medicaid billing service provider, switching to a less expensive service as those duties are kept in-house.

In other business, the board set a public hearing date for the proposed 2024/25 fiscal year budget for the next meeting on Monday, April 8, and approved a budget guarantee resolution to levy property tax for the upcoming fiscal year.

In club business, the board approved a fundraising event for the Middle School Robotics Club, which is collecting money to support its upcoming trip to Florida for a FIRST LEGO League invitational competition.

The board also approved a request from industrial technology instructor Jesse White to recognize the school’s SkillsUSA team as an official club so it can have access to an activity fund. SkillsUSA is a career competition where students compete in trade skills. Having access to the activity fund will allow them to pay for registration fees and other team expenses.