Lovinger to step down after 18 years on R-5 board

"I will miss coming to these meetings and being a part of such a fine organization," Lovinger said. "It has truly been a pleasure to work with people such as Larry Forkner who has been on the board for a good long time himself, and Chris Ellis and all the others. My youngest son is in college now and it's time for me to let someone else take my place."

Lovinger introduced Mike McCaffree to the board as one such possible replacement.

Superintendent David Stephens told the board the possible changes in how district employees retirement funds were handled are on hold. Last month Stephens said the district had been contacted regarding the possibility that some employees who were considered exempt from Social Security might have to start contributing but when elected officials including Senator Kit Bond and Congressman Ike Skelton contacted the Washington, D.C., office of the Social Security Administration they were told the national office didn't know what they were referring to and that it appeared the Kansas City office had originated the action.

Stephens said it would be at least 2010 before anything was changed and that it wasn't certain it would even change then.

Jim Chandler presented the board with figures from the Nevada Regional Technical Center. Chandler said that students filled 630 seats at the tech center but a student could be enrolled in more than one program which would cause them to be counted twice.

"We have 630 duplicated students," Chandler said. "Each student may be in more than one program so there are not that many actual students enrolled."

The number of students from other school districts declined. Chandler said the changing graduation requirements could be the problem.

"There has been a drop in the number of students from our partner schools," Chandler said. "The new requirements for graduation raise the credits needed and students might not be able to afford to lose that extra hour traveling back and forth to their school instead of being in a classroom."

Chandler said the construction tech students were working to get the construction house completed by May and were well on their way. He said that there were 27 nursing students, 12 in adult business education and 171 GED students.

The board also discussed changing to the Advanced Education accreditation for the entire district in addition to the current high school and technical center accreditation from North Central. The Advanced Education accreditation is internationally recognized and will highlight the Nevada district as a progressive institution in Missouri. The new accreditation will cost a one-time fee of $750 and $500 per school.