The Examiner U-46 News Feed

Pacts approved, renewed by District U-46 board

By Seth Hancock
  The Board of Education in School District U-46 voted 6-0 for a procurement contract for natural gas as well as $296,709 on two contract renewals at its meeting on Monday, Jan. 10. Board member John Devereux was absent.
  The district’s current natural gas contract, entered into three years ago at 27 cents per therm, will end in April.
  However, prices are much higher now at about 38 cents per therm. This approval will allow the district to sign a contract with either Constellation Energy or Mansfield Power and Gas with hopes of locking in a good price at the right time.
  “Although administration cannot lock in a rate until a contract is signed, we are hopeful that by completing the initial vetting process and submitting this to the Board of Education for review early, we will garner ample time to monitor the market and secure the best possible rate. After securing a rate, administration will return to present that rate to the Board of Education,” the proposal states.
  The contract renewals include $256,459 (education fund) with Renaissance-MyON and $40,250 (education fund) with Panorama Education.
  MyON’s “an online book database that provides each student, PreK-12, with a personalized digital library,” the proposal states.
  The Panorama contract is for an “equity and inclusion” survey.
  “Conducting this survey of our students helps us to address feedback provided by the Board of Education to ensure we are capturing student voice in our equity work,” the proposal states. “Panorama presents the results through a flexible reporting dashboard, allowing us to disaggregate by school, grade, gender, race/ethnicity, income status, and program participation to identify important patterns in our data. The proposal also includes two interactive ‘data inquiry workshops’ led by Panorama staff that have been valuable opportunities for our teams in previous years.”
  Also approved 6-0 was $15.6 million in itemized bills.