Each Callaway Board of Education meeting begins with district celebrations - acknowledging programs, faculty, and students who make Callaway Public Schools special. At the July 13 meeting, the focus of the celebration was the announcement of the school’s TeamMates chapter receiving the honor of Regional Chapter of the Year.

“It is such a cool honor, and is kind of the result of just a couple of people’s efforts. There are a lot of people involved with TeamMates, but the work that Karen Weverka and Suzanne Wendorff have put in to grow the chapter and keep everybody involved has really been cool,” said Superintendent J.D. Furrow.

The school’s FCCLA chapter also received recognition for their accomplishments at the national convention. We will have that full story in the Aug. 6 issue of the Courier.

Furrow announced that a new business manager to replace Tiana Lisby has been hired. While Melissa Jorgenson is transitioning into that position and learning the ropes, the next board meeting will be held a week later than usual.

There will also be a new board member next year, as Liana Hrupek has made the decision not to seek another term. Anna Johnson has filed for that seat, and she recently attended a board member candidate workshop in Broken Bow. She reported to the board about having a positive learning experience.

A portion of the July 13 meeting was also dedicated to preparation for the budget retreat, which was held July 21.

Furrow recently attended a leadership conference called HumanEx, and gave a summary to the board of some of the highlights of that conference. “I find it to be one of the best events that I attend every year,” said Furrow.

During his report, Furrow also updated the board on a legislative proposal that would impact the timing of the release of AQUESTT data - a proposal that the Callaway board participated in.

“This was board-generated, not from me,” said Furrow. “They would like to be more actively involved in the legislative side of their role. Our AQUESTT ratings come out in the middle of November, and that is kind of late to make informed programming decisions based on your data. So we asked if they would consider moving that deadline up. Currently, we are scheduling a sit-down with a couple of our board members and the director of the NDE towards the end of August. We’ll see if anything comes out of it.”

With temperatures hitting the triple digits for the past couple of weeks, it hardly seems the time to discuss heating options. However, Furrow explained that the bid process for propane can be a little complicated. “The price of propane fluctuates significantly, so we talked about the best way for us to take advantage of the fluctuating prices might be to give the leeway that when the prices are low I can reach out to different contractors and ask them to bid it at that time,” Furrow explained. “We’re hoping that the timing of that will help us save a little bit of money on our propane expense.”

The board approved the propane bid process as presented. Also approved was the 2026-27 student handbook, with the exception of items that will need to be revised once policies are updated. Dual part-time enrollment was discussed, as some families within the district would like to have their children enrolled at CPS for a class or two in order to be eligible for activities.

“We had a policy in place that had fairly strict numbers of kids in a class, so we looked at those numbers a little closer to allow us to take some of those parttime kids,” Furrow said.

Finally, the 2026-27 South Loup cooperative handbook was approved.

The next meeting of the Callaway Board of Education will be Aug. 17 at 8 p.m.