ROCHELLE – During Tuesday’s monthly board meeting, Rochelle Elementary District 231 approved Health and Life Safety Project bids.
The district has been cited in different areas at several buildings, some issues marked urgent.
“In our most recent 10-year Health Life Safety Survey, the district across five buildings were cited in various areas for improvement,” explained superintendent Jason Harper. “With some of those areas being marked with the highest level of urgency.”
Harper says that some of the areas marked for urgent improvement have already been taken care of, but one very important one remains needing to be done.
Both Tilton Elementary School and Rochelle Middle School have some areas that still contain asbestos from when the building was built, that needs to be removed and replaced with a newer, safer material.
“A lot of the tile in Tilton and a lot of the caulking around the windows here [RMS] contains asbestos from when it was built years ago, we have to have that removed and contained as we have done in the past,” said business manager Kevin Dale.

This project is currently taking priority over the window replacement project that was already underway at Tilton.
Board members were presented with four different bids prior to the meeting and approved one for a total of $894,235 broken down for two different companies — the bid for the general contractor, Larson and Larson Building Inc.  came in at $809,445.
The second bid is for NES Environmental Services in the amount of $84,790 for the asbestos removal.
Action Items
Board members approved the board policy updates. The updates were presented at the December board meeting, and members had the last month to look them over and ask any questions needed. No board members had anything they would like to change, so a motion to approve the new policy updates was passed.
“The board policy updates were presented at the last meeting and sat on the board table for the required month, so if there is no questions or discussions I would like to look for a motion to accept the policy updates,” Harper said.
The second topic that was discussed during the meeting was a review of the closed minutes for the past six months, and a decision to whether keep them closed or open them up for the public to view. After a short discussion, a motion was passed by the board to keep the last six months closed minutes closed.
Board members also approved the Food Services Intergovernmental Agreement with Oregon School District #220. Rochelle Township High School recently had its food services director retire so a new director was hired to fill the position but since the person does not have the experience as the previous director, the school has decided to go back to the previous agreement with Oregon. While this is a good plan, it is only temporary since the Oregon food services director will also be retiring soon.
“Ms. Boyd retires in five months as well, so we are trying to get as much training as possible during that time for our director,” added Harper.
The district is confident that the new director they hire will gain the experience needed to do the job properly when the time comes.