Galion BOE seeks bus garage design-build services

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

The Galion Board of Edu­ca­tion took its first step toward con­struct­ing a new bus garage at the work ses­sion held Thurs­day evening, Oct. 27. It autho­rized the school trea­surer to adver­tise for design-build ser­vices for the project. The board also passed res­o­lu­tions to sup­port the ath­letic boost­ers bingo oper­a­tion and a new stu­dent group.

School oper­a­tions direc­tor Kevin Early was unable to attend the work ses­sion, but has said at pre­vi­ous school board meet­ings that an advan­tage of the new design-build process over the tra­di­tional con­trac­tor setup is that the school can select the bid­der who presents the best value, not nec­es­sar­ily the low­est price, on a project. Design-build is one of the three new con­struc­tion bid­ding options allowed under Ohio House bill 153, made effec­tive in Sep­tem­ber of this year.

The Galion Boost­ers received per­mis­sion from the school board to use the inter­me­di­ate school as the des­ig­nated site for its state bingo license as long as the boost­ers com­ply with the school build­ing use agree­ment and all school board polices.

A con­tract with the North Cen­tral Ohio Edu­ca­tional Ser­vice Cen­ter for edu­ca­tional aide and psy­chol­o­gist ser­vices was approved. The con­tract amount totals $198,162 and is for the 2011–2012 school year. Another agree­ment, this one with the Syl­van Learn­ing Cen­ter to sup­ple­ment read­ing and math edu­ca­tion, was also passed. The agree­ment with Syl­van will cost no more than $1,293 per student.

A musi­cal instru­ment repair fund was estab­lished as a spe­cial rev­enue fund for dona­tions toward instru­ment repair. The dis­trict received a $700 dona­tion ear­lier in Octo­ber for that pur­pose. The board also approved advances from the gen­eral fund to two grant funds, to be repaid once the grant money is received from the Ohio Depart­ment of Education.

The board passed a res­o­lu­tion rec­og­niz­ing the T-Force stu­dent group as an approved orga­ni­za­tion, as well. The stu­dents named the group T-Force to stand for Tigers For Com­mu­nity Enhance­ment and pre­sented their aims and plans at the Octo­ber 13 school board meet­ing. The group intends to sup­port local char­i­ties via unique types of fundrais­ers not cur­rently used by other com­mu­nity organizations.

A sec­ond read­ing was approved of sev­eral school board poli­cies relat­ing to credit cards and pur­chas­ing cards, pay­ment of unused vaca­tion time, stu­dents’ use of med­ica­tions and the school calendar.

Sev­eral per­son­nel rec­om­men­da­tions were approved. Jena Opper­man will coach junior var­sity soft­ball as an extra duty assign­ment and Matthew Bar­nett will coach wrestling, also as extra-duty. Larry Daw­son will be inter­me­di­ate AVID (Advance­ment Via Indi­vid­ual Deter­mi­na­tion) coor­di­na­tor, to be paid a $400 stipend from the AVID grant funds. Ted Maglio and Ryan Tan­ner were approved to be Stu­dents for Pos­i­tive Choices coor­di­na­tors, to be paid $1,400 from the local stu­dent activ­ity accounts. Betty Man­ley and Ryan Tan­ner were also hired as sub-custodians.

The mem­ber­ship ros­ter for the Race to the Top Eval­u­a­tion Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee was approved, as fol­lows: Shelly Bar­ton, mid­dle school social stud­ies teacher; Fritz Cau­dle, high school prin­ci­pal; Ash­lee Cut­titta, pri­mary school inter­ven­tion spe­cial­ist; Andy John­son, mid­dle school prin­ci­pal; Cindy Par­rott, inter­me­di­ate school prin­ci­pal; Jen­nifer Rich, pri­mary school inter­ven­tion spe­cial­ist; Sue Jarvis, fifth grade teacher; Fred Rine­hart, high school math teacher; Cindy Voss, pri­mary school prin­ci­pal; and Toni Zehe, dis­trict spe­cial edu­ca­tion coor­di­na­tor. Com­mit­tee mem­bers will be paid an hourly rate.

Dis­cus­sion of pay­ment in lieu of trans­porta­tion and of the school build­ing use poli­cies was tabled until the Novem­ber 10 reg­u­lar meet­ing, to be held at 6:30 p.m. in the mid­dle school com­puter lab.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Nov 1 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.