Murray, NEB.- On Tuesday, November 8, the Conestoga Board of Education held their monthly meeting. All board members were in attendance. Student representative Jayden Speed was absent. No members of the community came to speak at the beginning.

The meeting began with presentations from two activities. Ryan Burns came with Aydin J to talk about SkillsUSA. SkillsUSA is a nationwide organization where students can compete in different categories across the board ranging from public speaking to technical trade skills to healthcare. Aydin, Conestoga’s chapter president who recently won accolades at a SkillsUSA leadership conference, talked about his experience with the program and what it has been involved in recently.

Then, Larry Welch came to discuss an activity that he coaches for the school, mock trial. Mock Trial places students in the role of an attorney or witness and challenges them to duke it out against another school in an actual courtroom. This year’s case involves an elderly dementia patient who has supposedly given several valuable items to. The students must fight to uphold the gifts or make the case that donative capacity was lacking at the time of the gifting.

The board then had several action items. First they unanimously approved the lease-to-purchase not to exceed $4.6 million for replacement of the HVAC system at the high school that Tracy Priefert stated was from 1979 and “antiquated.”

Then they voted unanimously to join the Nebraska Liquid Asset Fund. The new Nebraska English language arts standards passed unanimously. They also unanimously passed revised bylaws for the Conestoga foundation that would bring the number of school board members on the foundation board down to 3 from 6 and add community members in instead. This adds diversity to the board and avoids a quorum of school board members. Finally, the new method of evaluating superintendents was passed unanimously. The meeting adjourned at 5:53.