PRESCOTT – At the top of the July 19 Prescott School Board meeting, Superintendent Dr. Rick Spicuzza gave a shout out to those who keep the buildings in shape.

“Our custodians do an impeccable job with the deep cleans, setting up everything with regards to getting ready for the next fall,” he said. “But then we complicated it with flip flopping two schools and having construction in three sites and turning off water in two of them. Obviously, it's very hard to clean our sites when the custodians can't have access to water. Yet the good news is, is that we are on target with the getting the schools ready to receive our students in their new configurations.”

Prescott Middle School (grades 6-8) will be housed at 1220 St. Croix St., while Malone Intermediate (grades 3-5) will move to the former middle school building (125 N. Elm St.)

Food Service Manager Nicole Lenzer presented the 2023-24 Food Service proposal which tackled the decreased reimbursement from the US Department of Agriculture (37 cents/pupil less than last year) due to, in part, the expiration of COVID aid.  

“So, to kind of be ahead of that curve, we have a goal of increasing breakfast by 10% and lunch by 5%. We created social media and we're going to push that at the welcome back meetings,” Lenzer said. “We're going to hand it out to everybody who will take one and get everybody and get the kids engaged. We need our community to know who we are. We need everybody to know that if we give the kids Cinnamon Toast Crunch, it's not the same as you get at the store. It's the healthy version. We just want to make sure everybody knows what our program’s really about. And at the end of the day, we just want to make sure our kids are fed and that they're getting the nutrition.”

Lenzer is excited to debut special menu items to encourage students to try something new. Once a month new food will be promoted on social media and introduced to the students. If there is a favorable response, the item will be added to the regular menu.

Paving

The reworked plan/bid for paving the bus garage parking lot came before the board for approval. “We proposed doing the full bus garage, with the state of the art and at the high end for the work,” said Spicuzza. “There's a value engineered option one and then, just to confuse you, we have a Plan A and a Plan B. Plan A is to do the front of the garage and Plan B was to do the front where the workers are in the two bays and then come over a little bit.”

The first bid presented at the June meeting was $314,000; the revised plan to do the whole parking area came in at $263,000.

“When we first talked about the original base, which was four inches of asphalt, that is also 10 inches of gravel base and 12 inches of breaker with the fabric,” explained Building & Grounds Supervisor Mike Hoikka. “The best is with the fabric. Option one still does the entire parking lot but what we did is got rid of the fabric, so that lowered the excavating price; instead of doing the 12 inches of gravel base we are going to use kind of a crushed limestone, a little finer. They're going to use a granule fill versus the breaker rock. I know somebody had a question which ones holds up the best, and these are both really good systems.”

Spicuzza explained the project can be expensed through Fund 46, which is a capital savings account designated for maintenance or non-operational projects, or through the district’s general fund balance. Both are in good shape.

“Good news is that right now Fund 46, we believe, is going to end the year very close to having about $1 million saved for capital expenditures. In addition, your fund balance is remaining very healthy….” Spicuzza explained. “We have a baseline that has to be no less than $2 million and that we have to be able to pay our bills for three to four months. It does appear that our fund balance will be about $6 million. Again, that's the most fluid number. And that will continue to be refined between now and the annual meeting in September.”

Before the board decided on the paving options, they looked into future capital improvements. The most urgent was the restoration of the varsity track. The project would begin the summer of 2024 with an estimated cost of $100,000 to $120,000. One board member calculated that both the bus garage paving and the track projects expensed through Fund 46 would leave a tidy balance of $600,000.

The board agreed to approve option one of the garage paving project, which would cover the whole bus garage parking lot.