Board president resigns at March Highland BOE meeting

By Randa Wag­ner …
The High­land Board of Edu­ca­tion went into exec­u­tive ses­sion imme­di­ately after their March 14 meet­ing began and, when they resumed pro­ceed­ings, Supt. Dr. Bill Dodds announced Board Pres­i­dent Dave Gleason’s res­ig­na­tion. No rea­son was given for the action, and Board Vice Pres­i­dent Eric Thacker was des­ig­nated as act­ing pres­i­dent until a replace­ment could be appointed in 10–30 days. Dodds said a vote on the new appoint­ment selected by board mem­bers will be taken at the next reg­u­lar board meet­ing.
Eric Thacker offered a few words regard­ing Gleason’s res­ig­na­tion.
“We will miss Dave,” Thacker said, not­ing Gleason’s ‘long-term ded­i­ca­tion to the kids, ath­letic asso­ci­a­tion, HYO and to the board.’ “We’ll miss his dia­logue and we wish him the best.”
Dur­ing pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion, Food Direc­tor Deb­bie Hart shared upcom­ing changes in the food ser­vice depart­ment.
“There have been many changes in the menu,” she explained, “espe­cially the ala carte items and bev­er­age sales — due to the Ohio Sen­ate Bill 210 (Healthy Choices for Healthy Chil­dren Act), which set down new nutri­tional stan­dards. Basi­cally, it says the ele­men­tary and mid­dle school can sell only 100 per­cent fruit juice, milk and water. The high school has a few other options.”
A nutri­tion edu­ca­tion web­page now appears on the High­land Schools web­site.
She said ses­sion 205 of the reau­tho­riza­tion act deals with equity in school lunch pric­ing.
“The intent of that is to insure that suf­fi­cient funds are pro­vided for the food ser­vice account for paid lunches,” Hart said. “This requires schools to raise their lunch prices whether we want to or not, to stay in com­pli­ance. High­land has not had an increase in lunch prices since 2008–2009 school year.”
Hart rec­om­mended to the board they con­sider a 25 cent increase for the 2012–2013 school year ‘due to the for­mula to help us be in com­pli­ance.’
“If you don’t raise it a quar­ter, you’ll have to raise it ten cents every year to be in com­pli­ance, and I’d rather do it once than three years in a row,” she explained. “Hope­fully that will be suf­fi­cient for three years.”
A deci­sion did not have to be made at this board meet­ing, so the board will review the issue and vote on it before next school year.
Hart plans to send a let­ter out to the com­mu­nity explain­ing the rea­son for the increase.
Also dur­ing pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion, Chris Miller addressed the board, ask­ing to con­duct a study within the high school and mid­dle school to deter­mine the level of inter­est in a fall sports soc­cer pro­gram.
“What I’m request­ing is three days dur­ing the week to gauge the inter­est in eight through eleventh graders, then report back to the board if there’s a high enough level of inter­est to go to the next step of build­ing a team at the school,” Miller said.
Thacker said Mr. Dodds would get in touch with Miller to estab­lish a time and date to obtain the infor­ma­tion.
Enoch Adkins addressed the board con­cern­ing school­child­ren who are picked up at the for­mer High­land West Build­ing in Marengo.
“When Tri-State Youth Acad­emy takes over the Marengo school, where will those stu­dents be picked up?” Adkins asked.
“We haven’t talked about that but if Tri-State moves into that build­ing, there would not be a prob­lem,” Mr. Dodds said.
“But you’ve got trou­bled stu­dents in that build­ing,” Adkins said. “You’ve got young grade school kids hang­ing around wait­ing on the bus.”
“We have not had that dis­cus­sion,” Dodds responded. “I was not aware that Tri-State was going to occupy [that build­ing].”
Board report
Board mem­ber Galen Chap­man reported he attended the opi­ate edu­ca­tion pro­gram held at High­land High School and was impressed by the atten­dance, infor­ma­tion pre­sented and rep­re­sen­ta­tion by law enforce­ment and pub­lic offi­cials.
Supt. Dodds rec­og­nized two stu­dents for their recent achieve­ments. Fourth grade stu­dent Made­line Lyon com­peted against 30 fourth and fifth grade stu­dents to become the High­land Ele­men­tary Spelling Bee Cham­pion. Also rec­og­nized was Bran­don Sipe, for qual­i­fy­ing for the state spelling bee.
Dodds announced:
Employee of the month Mickey Walker was not present will receive his award at the next meet­ing.
On March 22 there will be a pub­lic meet­ing about the Utica Shale and becom­ing a mem­ber of the Mor­row County Landown­ers Asso­ci­a­tion.
On March 20 the Mt. Ver­non News All-Star game will be held in the gym.
The annual FFA ban­quet was to be held at the high school March 15.
Trea­surer Jon Mason gave an update on the school’s wind project.
“It’s pro­gress­ing slowly,” he said. “We’re still in the doc­u­ment phase, equip­ment is ordered and we’re work­ing through the details and the financ­ing.”
Prin­ci­pals’ reports
Ele­men­tary Prin­ci­pal Shawn Winkelfoos reported they kicked off their Scot Pride Reward pro­gram for grades 3 – 5. Mrs. Mosher and Mrs. Rine­hart are start­ing a Pen­nies for Patients Fundraiser, part of the Leukemia/Lymphoma Soci­ety, with a goal to raise $900, which is approx­i­mately a dol­lar per stu­dent. A ‘Dol­lars and Sense’ assem­bly was sched­uled for March 19 for stu­dents, and the school is prepar­ing for Ohio Achieve­ment Assess­ments.
Mid­dle School Prin­ci­pal Rob Ter­rill said they started Scot Pride Reward pro­gram (held Tues­days and Thurs­days after school) about two weeks ago. He said about a hun­dred stu­dents were invited to par­tic­i­pate in that, and expressed a ‘huge thank you’ to the bus dri­vers, who load up the stu­dents on the ele­men­tary buses.
“This is about the fifth year we’ve done it and it allows out stu­dents to get extra help as we gear up for the Ohio Achieve­ment Assess­ments,” Ter­rill noted. “We’re doing our NWA online assess­ment test­ing of stu­dents start­ing next week. We use the data from the first three nine-weeks to mea­sure growth and to assess how we can help our stu­dents on the achieve­ment test.”
He also com­mented the school has a good turnout of stu­dents for mid­dle school track.
Reg­u­lar busi­ness:
The board accepted the res­ig­na­tions of High School Social Stud­ies teacher Jen­nifer Appelfeller; Ele­men­tary Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion Instruc­tor Susan Byler; Edu­ca­tional Assis­tant Marci Ham­mond; and Admin­is­tra­tive Assis­tant Madolyn More­land.
The board approved a return from parental leave for Jen­nifer Hooper. Board mem­bers declined a leave of absence for Ele­men­tary Inter­ven­tion Spe­cial­ist Erin Porter. Sup­ple­men­tal con­tracts were approved for track assis­tants Caleb Dun­can and Scott Pauley. Sarah Whit­ford was employed as a High School Agri­cul­tural Edu­ca­tor and Michelle Hull was employed as an Edu­ca­tional Assis­tant.
The board approved an amend­ment to their Retire/Rehire con­tract, namely:
1. The Board may elect to hire High­land teach­ers who are retired under the State Teach­ers Retire­ment Sys­tem. Such teach­ers shall be granted a one year lim­ited con­tract only, which shall be auto­mat­i­cally non-renewed, with­out fol­low­ing the eval­u­a­tion process, fur­ther Board action or notice to the teacher. If the Board intends to rehire said employee in same posi­tion for addi­tional year(s), post­ing of the posi­tion will not be nec­es­sary.
2. Retired teach­ers shall be placed in the BACHELOR col­umn at STEP 4 on the teach­ers’ salary sched­ule. If rehired for a sec­ond or sub­se­quent year, they shall remain in the BACHELOR COLUMN at STEP 4.
3. Teach­ers hired under this sec­tion shall be eli­gi­ble for all insur­ance ben­e­fits pro­vided in Arti­cle IX C.
4. Teach­ers hired under this sec­tion shall not accrue senior­ity nor retain credit for senior­ity pre­vi­ously accu­mu­lated, and in the event of a reduc­tion in force shall be deemed the least senior in their areas of licen­sure. Rehired teach­ers shall begin with a zero sick leave bal­ance.
5. Teach­ers hired under this sec­tion shall be mem­bers of the teach­ers’ bar­gain­ing unit and shall be gov­erned by and eli­gi­ble for all ben­e­fits pro­vided in the Agree­ment, except the fol­low­ing pro­vi­sions shall not apply to retired/rehired teach­ers:
Sequence of Con­tracts, para­graphs A — I
Eval­u­a­tion • Addi­tional Col­lege Train­ing • Leave of Absence
Unpaid Leave of Absence for Pro­fes­sional Rea­sons
Pro­fes­sional Leave for Col­lege Entrance Exams
Senior­ity Pro­vi­sion
Assign­ment of Dis­placed Cer­ti­fied Employ­ees
Sev­er­ance Pay
National Board Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion
Non­re­newal of Lim­ited Con­tracts
Salary and Sup­ple­men­tals, except Sec­tion D
Sup­ple­men­tal Con­tracts
Not eli­gi­ble for employee sick bank
It is expressly agreed that any statu­tory rights which are com­pa­ra­ble to those pro­vi­sions listed in this para­graph which have been made inap­plic­a­ble to retired/rehired teach­ers are also specif­i­cally super­seded by this sec­tion.
SECTION 2. That this Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing expressly super­sedes all statu­tory pro­vi­sions incon­sis­tent with its terms under author­ity of R.C. 4117.1 O(A).
SECTION 3. That in all other respects, the Agree­ment between the par­ties shall remain in full force and effect in accor­dance with its terms.
The board approved a con­tract with Cardington-Lincoln Schools to share the ser­vices of the Food Ser­vice Direc­tor.
The next reg­u­lar High­land School Board meet­ing will be held April 11 at 7 p.m. in the high school cafetorium.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Mar 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.