It was a generally quiet meeting for the Columbia School Board on Thursday, with the October meeting centering mainly around discussion topics – though the board did approve a bid for the parking lot expansion project at Columbia High School.

The meeting opened with a Bond Issue Notification Act public hearing as the district approaches the process of selling a new round of bonds, an item which has seen some discussion at several recent meetings.

Columbia Superintendent of Schools Chris Grode led the hearing discussion, noting the district hopes to bring in new bonds without raising the tax rate.

“We’re intending to sell $10-11 million in bonds for the construction renovation at the high school,” Grode said. “This will be to get us started and will be structured based on the estimated moneys we’ll need to complete the project.”

Grode added that the board intends to take advantage of arbitrage, a process wherein, as Columbia School Board President Greg Meyer explained, the district is able to borrow funds cheaper than they are invested, thus making money on the bonds until construction begins.

Regarding the regular meeting agenda, only two action items were addressed, one of which was approval of a bid for the high school parking lot project which would see additional parking spaces added on the nearby hill in Bolm-Schuhkraft Park thanks to a partnership with the City of Columbia.

After some small discussion largely centered around scheduling concerns, the base bid of $417,445 from KRB Excavating was approved.

The other item receiving approval from the board was the 2023 annual financial report. Grode spoke positively about the recent district audit, though he noticed some issues had been discovered in the past year as district administration underwent various changes.

“A good audit is like going to the doctor. You get a checkup and they tell you what to do right,” Grode said. “Our FY23 had no issues, no problems with the financials. However, during that year, while we transitioned over our financial software, we realized that there are some weaknesses in our controls.”

Following the meeting, Grode offered further insight regarding these “weaknesses,” noting an incident reported earlier this year in which a former district bookkeeper was charged with stealing thousands in funds from the district.

“When you get an audit, it looks at your checks and balances, and people will watch the checks and balances and then try to figure out a way to deviate from that,” Grode said. “You can’t make anything foolproof, however, when people make poor choices, making sure that those avenues are closed, never to open again, is important.”

Thursday’s meeting also saw several discussion items on the agenda, including the first reading of the most recent Illinois Association of School Boards resolutions and progress regarding the high school renovation facility study.

During administrative reports, Columbia Assistant Superintendent of Schools Alyssa Smith provided her usual kudos to staff and faculty and rundown of goings-on in the district, also speaking briefly about the coming 2023 Illinois Report Card from the Illinois State Board of Education.

Smith connected this discussion to ongoing growth in the district, including professional development among staff and faculty and the process of determining education priorities.

“Our state standards, if you broke them all apart and taught them, there’s 15,000 hours worth of instruction that needs to happen to cover all of the standards,” Smith said, “and in a typical school year, if you don’t take out the days for homecoming games or Christmas parties or anything like that, we only have 9,000 hours of instruction, so there’s a lot to figure out what’s the priority and what’s the utmost importance to get taught with our students.”

In his superintendent’s report, Grode spoke about the district tax levy which will be discussed at the November meeting and stands at just under 4 percent.

Grode also echoed some of Smith’s sentiments regarding professional development, recalling how he was recently able to personally witness progress among Parkview Elementary faculty.

“I watched a bunch of the teachers here in Parkview, there’s no other way to say it, they were just absolutely nerding out about early literacy and the rules with consonant-vowel-consonant and what sound comes from… just the science of reading,” Grode said. “And I was just sitting there in awe, and it was really just very cool.”