The Mitchell Board of Education will consider approving use of a dairy products vendor for its food service program when it next meets.
The meeting is scheduled for Monday at 5:30 p.m. in Room 10 at the Mitchell Career & Technical Education Academy.
According to the agenda for the meeting, the Mitchell School District solicited proposals from three different dairy providers — Prairie Farms, Performance Foodservice and Hiland Dairy. The only vendor to return a proposal to the district was Prairie Farms, which Joe Childs, superintendent for the Mitchell School District, recommended accepting.
“The proposal will meet the district needs and is competitively priced,” Childs wrote in his agenda notes.
The district planned to rank all three vendors based on their submitted proposals. Categories for those rankings included pricing, service and deliveries and overall qualifications. Maximum ranking scores in those categories were listed as 51 for pricing, 29 for service and deliveries and 20 for overall qualifications.
Prairie Farms scored 51, 24 and 20 in each respective category.
Also in the food service lane, the board is also expected to consider meal prices for the 2024-25 school year. Childs recommended leaving the current breakfast and lunch rates the same as it was last school year for both children and adults.
That would leave prices as 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch for the reduced price, $1.85 for regular-priced breakfast and $2.80 for regular-priced lunch meals for elementary students and $2 for regular-priced breakfast and $3 for regular-priced lunch meals for middle school and high school students.
Adult meals would again be $3 for breakfast and $5 for lunch. Milk would be priced at 50 cents.
“After discussing the matter with Food Service Director Leann Carmody, it is my recommendation that food service prices for students and adults remain unchanged for the 2024-25 school year,” Childs wrote in his notes. “Given a number of efficiencies that have now been built into the food service program along with increased participation rates, we should be able to hold the meal prices unchanged without adversely affecting the fiscal health of the program and account balance.”
Personnel
Also at the meeting, the board is expected to consider the following personnel moves:
- The resignation of Rachela Dirksen, paraeducator at L.B. Williams Elementary School, effective June 15.
- The new Mitchell Technical College hires of Breanna Hermanek, registered nursing (RN) instructor, $65,000, effective the 2024-25 school year and Emily Trebil, nursing instructional technician, $58,000, effective Aug. 1.
Other business
Also at the meeting, the board is expected to:
- Consider approval of material bids for the Mitchell Technical College student-built houses #111 and #112.
- Hold a public hearing on the 2023-24 K-14 budgets of the Mitchell School District including Mitchell Technical College. The board reviewed both budgets at a previous meeting.
- Consider approval of the above budgets and supplements.
- Hear board member reports.
- Hear the superintendent report.
- Enter into executive session for the purpose of preparing for contract negotiations or negotiating with employees or employee representatives.
- Consider approval of an MOU for Mitchell School District coach/advisor pay.
- Hear public commentary.
The meeting is open to the public. The Mitchell Republic will livestream the meeting on its website.
