RE-1: Good news and bad news

MEEKER I “I have good news and bad news,” Andy Stewart of Vanir, the school district’s owner’s representative for the Meeker Elementary School said following a workshop of three committees held before the March 20 meeting.
“The structural repairs continue on schedule,” Stewart said. “The walls are closed back in on the first floor, we are working east to west on the high steel work and the large steel members were fished through existing windows and are now being welded and bolted in place. We are right on track for completion by summer.”
The bad news is that a panel is settling in the southeast corner of the gym wall. Stewart recommended bringing CTL-Thompson, the geotechnical company which performed and reclassified approximately half of the soils underneath the new building, before the repairs began. The soils where the settling, which was first noticed by Hightower last October, were not reclassified.
Stewart said the necessary measures to repair the problem will be based on soil conditions.
Sitting in for superintendent Susan Goettel, who is on medical leave, elementary principal Jason Hightower added an action item to the agenda.
In the preceding workshop, a resolution had been prepared appointing the initial board of the Meeker Education Foundation. The resolution, passed unanimously by the school board, read in part,
“That the foundation shall be a separate legal entity, independent and apart from the board and the district; and that thereafter the foundation board of directors shall independently adopt the foundation articles and bylaws and therein provide for the perpetuation of the said board as an independent body and succession of members thereof, and do all acts and things necessary and appropriate for the establishment of the foundation as a tax exempt organization.”
The committee recommended and the school board approved the following seven people to serve on the board: Jerry Oldland (two-year term, school board member), Tawny Halandras (three-year term, banking member), Barb Phelan (three-year term, retired teacher), Mandi Etheridge (two-year term, town/county administration), Dan Chinn (two-year term, service group member), Mary Strang (three-year term, community member) and Becky Hughes (two-year term, current teacher).
Oldland recommended the new board meet as soon as possible to begin organizing the foundation.