This is the first in a series of articles I am writing to update you on what the school board has been working on since the first of the year.

Let me start off by saying, as a new school board member, there has been and continues to be a lot for me to learn. There are many areas of the daily operations of our school system that I am learning.

# 1. The construction of the middle school. I’ve attended many construction meetings and watched the processes of building this campus into an awesome place to learn and one that our community can be extremely proud of for decades to come. Also, staying on budget through the construction process, and we are.

#2, The day to day operations. Learning how the maintenance and budgeted funds keep things running smoothly.

# 3 Our athletics. We have many extracurricular activities for students to participate in. These activities help our students to become the best young adults possible. How do we celebrate our success, and make things better and more competitive going forward?

# 4 The budget. Keeping our budget in line seems to be a moving target. With new mandates on teacher salaries, our dropping enrollment, the increase property insurance premiums and decreased property tax income.The grants we’ve received help with critical updates, however, we have other financial challenges.

# 5. The most important thing to me by far is our academics. I know that this can be a touchy subject for some, but it is a subject that needs to be discussed. I don’t know as much about education as I’d like to yet, but I do know that we need to talk about the future of our school and expectations our community depends on. I think, as a community we depend on our school to be the best it can be “period”. The economic growth or decline of the Tama/Toledo area greatly depends on our academic success at our schools. Any new business or company looking to come to our community will look at many things, such as restaurants, housing, our pool, local fire and police departments, theater, etc. But, in my opinion, they look at the school system and how we perform in comparison to other potential places to live and work for those families involved with their businesses. We have a lot to be proud of at STC school district, but I feel we could do a better job of meeting the needs of our graduates to get them ready for their future. There are things we can do to improve our test scores and challenge our students to be better.

School district performance scores in Iowa can be seen online at www.iaschoolperformance.org. This site is a little hard to navigate, but you can see how we score or rank compared to other school districts around us. Another website that ranks schools is www.schooldigger.com. This site also compares schools based on the rigor or how hard or in depth the subject is taught. These sites rank school districts on 2 basic subjects, english language arts and math. There are few standardized test for social studies or science.

So, as you can see, there is a lot to talk about and a whole lot more to learn. My hope is that we continue this conversation. In closing, I can’t say enough about our school employees and teaching staff. It takes a certain person to be a teacher. My hat goes off to all of them for “being in the ring” and doing the next to impossible… teaching our leaders for tomorrow! Until next week, that’s how I see it.

Rick Hopper is a member of the South Tama County board of education.