January 13, 2026 at 7:00 PM - Okarche Regular Board Meeting

Discussion:  Mr. Mueggenborg wanted to let everyone know that comments made during communications and public hearings, per our policy, can only be 5 minutes long per person, and you must sign up to speak before the meeting starts, and comments cannot be derogatory in nature.

Discussion:  Started the new semester.  We are two weeks in and things are going well.  This month we will do our safety drills.  We hosted a QB tourn last week and will host another next week,  We will be doing our school-wide spelling bee soon.  Mastery Connect is in and covers all the subject areas.  Next month we will go back to benchmark testing.  

Discussion:  The Okarche Teaching Greenhouse is 99% finished. All that needs to be completed is hooking up the gas to the heaters. Mr. O'Donnell wants to thank each one of you for allowing this teaching greenhouse to be built. He highly encourages each of you to come and take a look inside. His classes have been hard at work already putting the greenhouse to use for the spring plant sale.  Robotics team is currently second in league and league championship is going to be on Feb 7.  In Band, 6 kids participated in the Red Carpet Honor Band last weekend. 4 kids will participate in the All Area Honor Band this coming weekend.  Several hundred students from across NW Oklahoma auditioned for each band. Making the band is a high honor.  Beta Club inducted 36 members tonight!  They are recognized academic achievement, character, leadership, and service.   Congrats to them and all their efforts to earn entry into this Club.  STUCO is having the Week of Love the week of January 26th - 30th with the Coaches vs. Cancer game on February 3rd.  Winter Formal is Feb. 7th from 8:00-10:00pm
Mr. Alig asked Mr. Parham about the grades he went over last meeting.  From 7th to 8th grade we had a pretty big drop in it.  He asked why we are seeing such a drop.  Mr. Parham said there is a different standard from 7th to 8th.  It could be their performance from year to year as well.  Mr. Alig is wondering if we need to do something to improve JH math.  Mr. Parham said that it depends on kids and whether they are taking Algebra 1 or pre-algebra again, too.  

Discussion:  Second semester is off to a good start.  Students continue to have success and do well.  We get comments from all over the state like academic bowls, athletics, all sorts of areas.  We are proud of them.

Discussion:  General fund had 2.3 million, Bldg has 2.2 million. We did receive our first initial tax payment right about $2 million in January.  Mr. Alig asked about the account going negative in December.  Mr. Sumrall said our general fund has money in CD's at the bank, so we did not run out of money.  The bank knows we get our initial payment in the first week of January.  The bank doesn't make us get it out of CD's since we have the big payment coming in.  Mr. Alig asked what safeguards could be put in place to keep that from happening.  Could we have defered payments for a month?  Mr. Sumrall said we are going to discontinue our cleaning company starting March 1st.  We also have a plan in place that as staff leave we will absorb them by attrition.  Mr. Alig asked if we have looked at child nutrition and what we can do there?  In the last 5 years we have taken $1.49 million out of our general fund to pay for child nutrition.  Mr. Alig said that Robin Hill (a K-8 school) is a good comparison to us for what we could benefit from being on the child nutrition program.  Mr. Alig asked if we could see if our Treasurer could audit Keystone.  It's in our policies not to purchase food at cost plus over 10%.  A Keystone employee is doing inventory to track food.  Mr. Sumrall said that Hope oversees that.  He will visit with Hope.  Mr. Alig pulled line items on expenditures from OCAS and thinks we should look at it line by line and see where we could save money.  Mr. Alig said building maintenance has increased a lot.  Mr. Alig would like us to try and save other places before we take away bonuses and such.  Mr. Alig asked if Mr Sumrall knew we were in this shape before the October and November meetings.  Mr. Sumrall said he knew it was a possibility that revenue would decline.

Discussion:  Returned at 10:07pm

Discussion:  No action was taken.

Discussion:  None