Communication plan approved

By Barbara Brown
North Branch school district officials could stand some improvement in their communications methods, but overall, the board does a good job.
The board hired Bob Noyed in March to analyze how district staff communicates with the different groups involved in the schools.
Bob Noyed calls himself a public relations and strategic planner for school districts.
Noyed, who spent 15 years as a communications officer for schools, spent time with about 20 different groups inside and outside the schools to determine the way the district keeps in contact with others.
What he found was that the board and district officials generally have good communication with the public, but that more direct contact could be successful.
For example, Noyed suggested the district start school-based newsletters that could be mailed to homes on a monthly basis instead of on large districtwide newsletter that comes out less frequently.
He also suggested ways for the district to get the community more involved in the school buildings.
He said the board could put together a community leaders advisory committee to meet three or four times a year to advise the board on how its decisions might affect businesses, civic organizations, city business and other areas.
Noyed also suggested implementing a ìPrincipal for a Dayî program that would allow community members to connect with the schools.
Bringing civic organizations to the school buildings would be another way to increase community involvement, Noyedís report said.
He suggested scheduling days for those organizations in the district ñ including the Lions, American Legion or Jaycees ñ to give presentations or spend the day volunteering in the classroom.
Noyed also suggested the district schedule a ìState of the Schoolsî address to be given each year to keep parents and other community members up to date on what the schools had accomplished in the previous year.
For teachers, Noyed suggested several ways the board could improve its communication with them.
He said e-mail databases that would send regular scheduled event reminders are helpful.
He also said teachers and support staff also need to get occasional pats on the back for jobs well done.
He said the district could come up with a staff committee that could develop a recognition program for efforts of staff in a variety of fields.
Also at the June 26 meeting, the board, the board:
Voted against signing a project labor agreement with trade unions that could be eligible to work on the new elementary school project. The agreement would have held the unions to not allow strikes to affect the progress and would have held non-union shops that might win a bid for the project to pay prevailing wage.
The board decided to open bids to any construction firm and ask that they all pay prevailing wage without requiring their membership in the unions.
The board was given several options for a levy referendum request for this fall.
District finance manager Randi Johnson made charts for the board members and public to show the tax impact of different levy rates ñ from $500 per pupil unit to the state cut-off of $855.79.
The state will pay more toward a levy this year than it would have last year, should one be approved by North Branch district voters. For example, on a funding request of $500 per pupil unit, an owner of a $150,000 house in the district would pay $164 more in taxes in 2004, but only $143 more over 2003 in 2005.
If the levy had been approved last November, the tax payer would have seen a $227 increase in taxes.

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