At the District 99 School Board Meeting on Sept. 17, 2018,  the board members discussed many changes being made in both the DGN and DGS buildings and multiple aspects of potential improvements for the district. Here is a brief breakdown of the meeting.

Renovations:

The board went into detail about the Master Facility Plan. The Master Facility Plan is the construction being done on both schools in order to make improvements upon each learning environments. DGS and DGN are close to completion of the initial design concepts, and a presentation is scheduled for next month on Oct. 1.

Along with a goal of improving the school district, the school board touched on maintaining satisfactory conditions for the surrounding community of each school.

The initial tests are complete including soil borings and a noise survey. The soil tests are said to be clear of any contamination.

The noise trial, also known as the “environmental noise survey”, concerns the noise levels the construction would have. All tests are claimed to have been successful.

On Oct. 17 there is a community open house. Construction is scheduled to start in the spring/summer of 2019.

Grant Money:

Both DGS and DGN received a grant for the science department. DGS was granted $1,928 for the research club and DGN was granted $2,000.

 Diversity:

The school board also discussed the improvement in hiring more diverse staff members at DGS and DGN.

In the 2017-2018 school year, there was a Diversity Committee that consisted of 16 members. The committee focused on hiring minority staff members and stretched its boundaries past recruitment purposes.

The board also touched on the challenges of hiring diverse staff members. They said a couple of the challenges include a decline of students studying education, promoting the vitality of diversity in hiring decisions and difficulty passing the TAP test.

Some solutions presented were portraying their Diversity Initiative message on the district website, reaching out to colleges and students, utilizing social media, analyzing the hiring process and attending job fairs.

The school believes that one of the best ways to hire people is through the use of social media.  The NWPA (Northwest Personnel Administrators) created a diversity in education virtual networking fair that was shared with universities around the country — 83 candidates submitted video résumés.

The first thing the hiring staff does before looking at any paper screening about the candidate is hold a video interview. The given candidate can submit a video interview, answering questions that are given on the website. They feel that the video helps them learn more about the person than paper could show about the candidate