Sale of Iberia, Johnsville school properties officially approved

By Sarah Ein­se­len, Galion Inquirer Reporter
The Iberia and Johnsville school prop­er­ties are offi­cially going back to those com­mu­ni­ties.
The North­mor Board of Edu­ca­tion approved the sale of the land on which the old school build­ings for­merly sat at its reg­u­lar meet­ing Thurs­day, March 15. The Perry/Congress Fire Depart­ment in Johnsville won the Johnsville auc­tion with a $13,000 bid and the Wash­ing­ton Town­ship trustees made a $10,000 win­ning bid on the Iberia prop­erty. Both parcels were auc­tioned off on Feb. 18.
Mor­row County res­i­dent Roland Saut­ter asked the board dur­ing pub­lic com­ment why it didn’t sim­ply give the Iberia land to the town­ship rather than mak­ing the trustees pay for it.
“I fail to under­stand why I’ve been pay­ing taxes on it since 1956 and I have to buy it back and pay for improve­ments,” he said. “I’m going to have to pay taxes on it again for the $10,000 plus any improve­ments that have to be made.”
Board vice pres­i­dent Car­lyle Smith replied that the board went through processes required by the Ohio School Facil­i­ties Com­mis­sion regard­ing dis­posal of the old school prop­er­ties. No inter­ested par­ties came for­ward when the exist­ing build­ings and land they sat on were made avail­able for sale, he said, so the build­ings were razed and the land put up at auc­tion.
Com­mu­nity mem­ber Dean Van­Horn, also in atten­dance, said that when prop­erty is trans­ferred from one gov­ern­ment entity to another, state law says there has to be money exchanged or an equal trade made. If the prop­erty had been sold to the town­ship trustees for $1, he said, the school would have lost out and oth­ers would have been unhappy.
“There’s two sides to it,” Van­Horn said.
Northmor’s 2012–2013 school cal­en­dar was approved and sched­uled classes to start on the Wednes­day after Labor Day as in years past. That will put the year’s start after the end of the county fair, super­in­ten­dent Brent Winand noted.
The board autho­rized school admin­is­tra­tion to adver­tise for bids on replace­ment bleach­ers at the foot­ball and track fields. Winand noted the booster club has said they’re will­ing to dis­man­tle the exist­ing bleach­ers. They will be rebuilt at the base­ball and soft­ball fields and any left­over alu­minum sold to a nearby school dis­trict that has expressed inter­est.
A request from high school sci­ence teacher B.J. Trainer to take the sci­ence club on an out-of-state trip to Chicago over April 16–18 was approved. The club will visit the plan­e­tar­ium and aquar­ium there. Costs for the trip will be cov­ered by the stu­dents, not the dis­trict.
The board approved con­tracts with the North Cen­tral Ohio and North Point edu­ca­tional ser­vice cen­ters for ser­vices for spe­cial needs stu­dents. NCOESC will sup­ply audi­ol­ogy ser­vices at $77 per hour plus travel reim­burse­ment for a hearing-impaired stu­dent who needs the ser­vices for test­ing.
The con­tract with North Point cov­ers ser­vices for a res­i­den­tial stu­dent at Flat Rock Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter at a cost of $31,000.
“Obvi­ously that dol­lar amount is high,” Winand said, adding most of it will be reim­bursed by the state, based on the kind of dis­abil­ity the stu­dent has.
Sev­eral chap­er­ones for the eighth grade trip to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. were approved at $25 per night, and Dean Van­Horn was hired as a bus mechanic for the remain­der of the school con­tract year. Van­Horn will receive $187 per day until the next con­tract year, at which time he’ll be paid accord­ing to the school’s pay sched­ules.
Mater­nity leave requests from Amber Wheeler and Stephanie Uhde were also approved. Uhde, a fifth grade social stud­ies teacher, will leave in early April and expects to return on May 28. Wheeler, a high school fam­ily and con­sumer sci­ences teacher, asked to take her leave in Sep­tem­ber and then take the remain­der of the 2012–2013 year off with­out pay.
Ele­men­tary prin­ci­pal Becky Oliver said the fam­ily fun night on March 5 was extremely well-attended. The first through third-grade junior spelling bee will take place on March 29. First and second-grade music pro­grams will be pre­sented on April 17 and the kinder­garten music pro­gram is sched­uled for May 24.
All board mem­bers except Tim Bachelder were present for the March 15 meet­ing. The next North­mor school board meet­ing will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thurs­day, April 19, in the junior/senior high school library. The pub­lic is encour­aged to attend.

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.