Brookings school board members made two key decisions Monday: The district's K-12 students will head back to school early again this year, beginning the fall term on Aug. 18. And Mills Construction of Brookings will soon begin work on Phase III construction at Brookings High School. The work will cost $5.54 million. At the school district's regular monthly board meeting Monday, Superintendent Roger DeGroot opened the floor for discussion by first announcing plans as to how the district is going to collect input for setting future school start dates.

The early start this year and next have drawn criticism some who say the the time interferes with summer activities like family vacations or, for older students, summer jobs.

DeGroot says the next school year calendar is in place, and the board has approved it. And even though some may feel the mid-August start is too early, the reason this fall's dates cannot be changed is because the school activities calendar has to be set a year ahead of time.

By policy, a calendar committee comprised of five school administrators and five teachers is in place to help set those dates, DeGroot says.

Administrators who make up that group are Curriculum Director Dorothy Zuiderhof, Activities Director Steve Berseth, and principals Paul von Fischer, Dan Neiles and Richard Brubakken. Teachers on the panel include Sally Pies, Sue Sackmann, Matt Christie and Jule Bullington. A recent teacher resignation has left one seat open.

Although the panel doesn't require it, the group will add public representation , choosing two parents to participate .

DeGroot says the committee has surveyed staff on their opinions for a start date but would like to go more in-depth and resurvey them because an earlier survey didn't ask at what grade levels the respondents taught.

"It's kind of important to know how do the high school teachers feel, how do the middle school teachers feel and how do the elementary teachers feel," said DeGroot.

Board President Marysz Rames encouraged the committee to look at the past five years of Brookings calendars. DeGroot agreed and said they would also take an important step by surveying the parents and high school students.

He said he hasn't figured out yet the best way to reach parents but thought there may be potential to do so at parent teacher conferences .

However, DeGroot says not everyone goes to spring conferences and that fall would be more preferable as "there'd probably be a 99 percent turnout."

The committee is also going to contact other schools. To survey parents

Zuiderhof is chair of the committee , which will meet Thursday to discuss how it will survey parents and get input on how to set dates for the 2011-2012 school year.

"I'd really like to run this calendar two years to get some data," DeGroot. "We'll gather the data now, and we'll run it one more year and get a baseline, and we'll compare it to last year and see if it changes.

"I don't want to change it just because," he said. "If we do change it, we may have some people upset with us because they really liked it the other way.

"We really need to base any changes on research and data," said DeGroot. "I think another year will do that."

DeGroot says he doesn't think the committee is set on keeping a date one way or the other. "Whatever works with the staff and the parents, we're going to go with," he said.

"We'll base this on both the research and what we think is best for kids," he said. Phase III bid accepted

In other major action, the board says the district is getting a real "bang for its buck" with Phase III of the remodeling and additions to the Brookings High School.

The board unanimously voted to award the bid for the final piece of the project to Mills Construction, with a price tag of $5.54 million.

Of 16 companies that submitted bids for the project, the three lowest bids came from local companies : Mills Construction, Clark Drew Construction and Waltz Construction.

Prep work for the final part is already under way as the gas mains were redirected in January. Phase III includes new classrooms located on the northeast, a new cafeteria, remodeling of the auditorium, moving guidance counselors into the main office and a theater storage and green room.

Brookings High School Principal Paul • von Fischer and members of the committee were present and  discussed the process they went through to come up with the right bid.

The committee met last week to review the proposals, all of which von Fischer said were very close. School board officials had expected the project to cost about $5.5 million, but the lowest bids came in at $5.7 million to $5.8 million. Added, deleted items

Von Fischer said this forced the committee to go back to the drawing board. "We needed to find things we couldn't live without and make sure they were on the list," he said.

"The second thing we did was took some things off that could be done later and weren't immediate needs," von Fischer said.

He then said the committee then discovered that number was lower than the budgeted amount. "So we went back in and put things back onto the list ... "

Von Fischer said to meet the project's budget, his group had to eliminate three alternate add-ons . Two of them were air handling units for the main gym and the auditorium. Both units currently in use are functioning and noisy, but adequate. The architect base bid for Phase III includes ways to dampen the noise.

The third item that didn't make it back into the plans was roller shades in the commons area, which will be added at a later date.

"The bids were extremely close," said von Fischer. "We were very pleased with the turnout and the amounts. I think we are going to have an exceptional facility when this is all done."

"We got quite a bit of additional value," said board member Steve Bayer. "A lot of things that we didn't think we were able to provide, we were able to get."

"We got everything we wanted to. And I'm glad locals were in the final three," said DeGroot.

Rames says some credit needs to go to Koch Hazard Architects of Sioux Falls.

"They made sure we had a base bid so we got a project off the ground." Work to start soon

DeGroot also reported that a tunnel connecting the basement below the band room to the boiler room is now complete. This will link all of the services going into the building.

Phase III work is scheduled to start April 1 and should be completed by October 2011.

In final action, the board moved into executive session. When members reconvened, they unanimously voted to not renew the contract for Donna Surat, special needs preschool teacher at Camelot Intermediate School.

They also voted unanimously to reduce orchestra teacher David Mitchell's contract 71 percent due to a reduction in force at Brookings High School.

Contact Vicki Schuster at vschuster @brookingsregister.com.