Royal School District to get key card locks

ROYAL CITY — The Royal School District will have new locks, effective Nov. 12, was the report at a regular school board meeting on Monday, Oct. 28.

“There is concern that there may be a number of keys that people have that may not be turned in,” said Roger Trail, Royal School District superintendent.

The current system will be replaced with a key card system. This will allow the district to better monitor who is coming in and out of the building.

“If they’re no longer employed, we can turn off the key card,” Trail said. “We can control when people have access to buildings.”

The area that will take longer to get changed over will be the gym. Trail said that they won’t be able to change it over until after the renovation is over.

The new locks will be installed on Friday, Nov. 8.

In other business, several administrators reported that they have seen teachers using strategies in the classroom that they have learned in training they have received.

“We had a chance to do walkthroughs,” said Dave Jaderlund, principal of Royal Middle School. “We saw a lot of those trainings in the classroom.”

Greg Pike, of the Royal School District business office, reported that the deadline for submitting a replacement levy to the county is approaching. The board indicated that they would like the levy to stay around $1.50 per $1000 of assessed value. Pike indicated that he won’t know the exact levy rate until February. As part of the levy process, the district is now required to submit an expenditure plan to the state before they can create a resolution to be approved by the board.

Pike also reported that enrollment for October is near the budgeted enrollment.

“The kindergarten class is way low this year,” he said. “There are only 113.”

Royal School District Athletic Director Chris Hill told the board that the district will have some decisions to make regarding the upcoming changes in the way leagues are structured.

“Our league is going to change drastically,” Hill said. “We don’t know what is going to happen to a couple of schools in our league. There are some that could opt up.”

The changes won’t be final until January.

“At some point our league is going to have to make a decision,” Hill said. “The league wanted to listen to what we and Wahluke had to say. The state is going to change a lot.”

Gail Hardman, Red Rock Elementary School assistant principal, reported that there are 65 children on the robotics teams this year. Last year, there were only three teams. Each team has ten children.

“We should definitely be sending someone to state,” Hardman said.

The board approved the addition of sixth-graders to the seventh- and eighth-grade wrestling teams.

“Wrestling is a great equalizer,” said Ben Orth, one of the head coaches in the district. “You only wrestle someone your own weight.”

Orth pointed out that most schools in the league already allow sixth graders to wrestle. Board member Mike Noftle argued against the proposal, saying that sixth-graders in other sports are not allowed with their older peers. Orth said that cross country also makes an exception to that rule.

“Other schools in the league are doing it,” Orth said. “A no vote puts us behind.”

In the end, the proposal was passed with Noftle voting against it.