 - The Riverton School Board is mulling what to do about a new high school service club request that “got lost” in the approval process and wasn’t included in this year’s budget.){kind=link}
(Riverton, WY) – The Riverton School Board is mulling what to do about a new high school service club request that “got lost” in the sanctioning process and wasn’t included in the district budget this year.
Superintendent Jodi Ibach said a group of students brought the club request to the Riverton High School building leadership team last year, but “somehow … it wasn’t communicated forward” to district administrators for sanction.
As a result, Ibach said the school board was never asked to officially sanction the new club – and by the time she learned about the oversight, “our budget (had) already been completed for the school year, and “we (were) already over our allotted amount” for club financing – so “I wasn’t going to bring it before the board to be sanctioned” this year.
Instead, Ibach said she brought the issue to the school board as a discussion item this week, because the “nice folks that came here to advocate for it want it to be sanctioned.”
Interact Club
Several members of the Riverton Rotary Club approached the school board this week requesting that the district sanction the new Interact Club – Rotary International’s service club for young people ages 12-18.
Rotary International has already approved the local Interact Club, and the Riverton Rotary Club has voted unanimously to support it, Riverton Rotarian and Interact Sponsor Katie Peay said, expressing hope that the school board would be “as willing as we are to validate (these students’) thoughts and ideas and actions and all of their hard work.”
“They’re just excited to give back in a new way to the community,” Peay said.
Student Tierney Faubion said the Interact Club offers “something unique” because “it connects us with Rotary International, giving us access to global service projects, leadership development, and mentorship from community leaders.”
“This isn’t a duplicate,” she said, referring to the RHS Key Club. “Interact is not here to compete with existing groups. We want to complement them by adding new opportunities for students to lead, serve, and make a difference.”
RHS Key Club Kiwanis Advisor Gay Hughes wasn’t so sure the groups would complement one another, however, recalling that Sheridan High School sanctioned both organizations in recent years, and as a result, “neither one of them were any good.”
“I’m advocating for no need for two service clubs, because we have a strong club and we’d like to keep it that way,” Hughes said.
Faubion responded to those comments later, pointing to another school – Thunder Basin High School in Gillette – where the Key Club and Interact Club are both “running very strong.”
“A lot of places do have successful organizations that have both Key Club and Interact,” she said. “They work together very well.”
‘A budget issue’
Earlier, Faubion had also pointed out that “when a school allows non-curricular clubs, all student-initiated clubs must be treated equally” – referring to the Federal Equal Access Act of 1984 and subsequent Supreme Court rulings.
School officials acknowledged those federal obligations during last week’s meeting, but they didn’t discuss the question of club compatibility further, characterizing the situation as “a budget issue” instead.
“It’s not that we’re saying, ‘No, don’t have a club,’” Ibach said. “It’s that we’re saying, ‘At this time the district doesn’t know if we have the capacity to add the additional organization in our responsibilities.’”
The district oversees its officially sanctioned clubs – paying faculty advisors, facilitating promotions and purchases, and covering liability costs, for example, Ibach said.
By contrast, she said unsanctioned clubs do not receive district oversight – but they can still use school facilities like any other community organization.
“There’s really not a lot of difference between if they have the club unsanctioned or sanctioned,” Ibach said. “The sanctioning part just puts more responsibility on the district, (and) at this time … we didn’t want to take that on as another activity account.”
The Interact Club is currently operating as an unsanctioned club at RHS, having received approval from the building leadership team, Rotarian Jonathan Faubion told County 10 this week.
Students are invited to attend meetings at lunchtime on Mondays in Room 102 at RHS.
Tabled
During last week’s discussion, Ibach suggested that the school board could simply “reconsider” the Interact Club’s request for sanction next year – but Trustee Carl Manning moved to table the topic until the next board meeting to give school officials the chance to “decide if you want to bring it back to the board as an action item.”
“It’s a budget issue,” Manning said. “That’s basically what the superintendent has to mull and see with our business manager how that process would work.”
The board approved Manning’s motion, and Board Chair Bruce Berg said they would revisit the topic in two weeks.