EVANSTON — Much of the material covered at the Uinta County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 10, was a rehash of what was covered at the meeting the previous week on Tuesday, Oct. 3, when the board lacked a quorum for a portion of the meeting and was therefore unable to approve certain items. 

As at the previous meeting, a considerable amount of time was spent discussing a board resolution to reduce the size of the board to seven members from the current nine. Superintendent Ryan Thomas shared a survey he had developed to solicit input from the community about the size of the board. 

Thomas said it is important to get stakeholder opinions on not just the size of the board, but also the reasons behind those opinions and to provide an opportunity to add comments to the survey. The survey is available to the public on both the district website at uinta1.com and through a link on the district’s Facebook page. 

There will also be a public forum dedicated to the topic of board size at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 24, at the Educational Service Center building. 

Trustee Kerby Barker said he wanted to also get public opinion about whether board members should be elected from districts instead of at-large. Barker said that as long as a survey is being sent out, it should include questions about districting. 

Other board members disagreed and said that only complicated the survey. Trustee Jami Brackin said that for now she wanted to focus only on the size of the board and the districting issue can be discussed further later. 

Thomas said changing from an at-large board to having districts would be a very intensive process, while reducing the board size is straightforward and relatively simple. Barker said he is concerned about representation for Hilliard and Almy if the board size is reduced without any consideration of districting. 

The board voted on whether questions about districts should be included on the survey, with only three trustees voting to include them. Questions about redistricting of the school board are not included on the community survey. 

District Facilities Director Jaraun Dennis provided the trustees with an update about projects at several buildings. The ESC building is having a new elevator installed, which required all other building systems to be up to code. The fire system in the building did not meet code requirements, so the fire system and sprinklers have also been updated over the last several weeks. 

Dennis also provided an update on the Davis Middle School swimming pool. The school was constructed in the early 1980s and the pool’s original main circulation pump stopped functioning. Dennis said replacing the pump is not a simple process, as the pump had to be built specifically for that pool to meet its specifications. 

In addition to the pump being built, an A-frame has to be constructed in order to get the pump into place, said Dennis. He said the pump has arrived and they are now working to get it installed. Once the pump is in place, they will then have to get the water up to temperature and get the right chemical balance before anyone can use it. Dennis said that there are a lot of rumors floating around about the district not fixing the problem quickly enough. “We found a way to get the pump here as soon as we could,” said Dennis. 

The board approved a request for Horizon High School students to travel to Laramie for an overnight field trip to attend University of Wyoming Discovery Days and tour WyoTech. Trip sponsor Rebecca Young presented the trip to the board for approval at the Oct. 3 meeting, but approval was held off until the Oct. 10 meeting due to lack of a quorum.

Young said the trip is a great opportunity for students to make connections with college, and that it does align to curriculum standards. Young also said the trip has been planned to be minimally expensive, coming out to a mere $17 per student. 

During the field trip discussion, Thomas mentioned that the district may have to fight to be reimbursed for the trip because the students will be participating on a Saturday. Recently updated requirements for reimbursable trips have made Saturday trips problematic, said Thomas. Assistant superintendent Doug Rigby said the new requirements are “just silly.” 

Thomas said there are trips with no academic benefit, such as field trips to Lagoon, for which the district will not be reimbursed. However, he said it makes no sense that an academic trip, such as the Horizon trip to UW, would be problematic because they return on a Saturday. 

“It makes no sense to have our professionals plan these trips to avoid missing as much school as possible and to find out that’s why they’re potentially not reimbursed. ... My position is that’s a hill we’re willing to die on,” said Thomas.