Wind Project on hold for Highland Schools

By RANDA WAGNER –

Wind gen­er­a­tors for High­land Schools won’t be turn­ing any­time soon.

High­land Schools’ Trea­surer Jon Mason updated the board and com­mu­nity on the Wind Project at the April 17 reg­u­lar board meeting.

“The best way to describe the wind project is that it’s on hold,” he said. “It’s com­ing up on two years now and the dif­fi­cult part has been the financ­ing of it. There were two Ohio Dept. of Devel­op­ment grants for $500,000 that are not going to develop, which made the project pretty much a mar­ginal call.”

He said the board believes the area is good for wind, but it’s a mat­ter of putting the pack­age together and, “we’re not there yet with the indi­vid­ual com­pany we’re work­ing with. It’s on hold until we find that miss­ing piece of financ­ing to the school’s benefit.”

Superintendent’s Report

Supt. Bill Dodds had awards to issue but none of the three to be rec­og­nized were able to attend the April 17 meet­ing. March’s Employee of the Month Mickey Walker, April’s Employee of the Month Sara Guy and (par­ent) vol­un­teer Dale Minyo will be hon­ored at the May meeting.

In his update on Race to the Top, Dodds said, “We are con­tin­u­ing our focus on stu­dent achieve­ment and tran­si­tion­ing to the com­mon core. Each grade level and sub­ject are on tar­get and they have com­pleted the first phases of our cur­ricu­lum align­ment. We have two more years left in the process — after this year we’ve set some tar­gets and we’re on pace.”

He said the next steps in May will be align­ing com­mon assessments.

“Also we are par­tic­i­pat­ing the High School Higher Edu­ca­tion allot­ment, which is through the Mid-Ohio Edu­ca­tional Ser­vice Cen­ter and work­ing with North Cen­tral State Col­lege Mt Ver­non Nazarene and a num­ber of other dis­tricts,” Dodds explained. “The goal of that is to make sure that our stan­dards for our high school stu­dents match those for col­lege level courses. We do very well in that area because we have a num­ber of courses that are already col­lege credit courses for our stu­dents through dual credit.”

Mr. Dodds made men­tion of a minor non-injury acci­dent between a bus and a car the pre­vi­ous week in the north­ern part of the county. The ele­men­tary stu­dents were trans­ferred to another bus with­out incident.

Hello Dolly will be pre­sented April 27, 28, and 29. An extra day was added due to high ticket sales.

On May 12 High­land will be cel­e­brat­ing the arts with an Art Show at the high school for all grade levels.

Ohio Achieve­ment Assess­ment tests for ele­men­tary and mid­dle school stu­dents will begin in two weeks.

May 5 is the prom. Grad­u­a­tion had to be changed due to a ten­ta­tive sched­ule with ath­letic tour­na­ments. The new date for the 140 grad­u­ates to receive their diplo­mas at 2:30 p.m. on Sun­day, May 20.

Dodds thanked the com­mu­nity for their sup­port of the recent High School fundraiser as well as those who par­tic­i­pated and helped out.

The board approved the fol­low­ing employ­ment recommendations:

Employ Ash­ley Ball, Caleb Dun­can, Rachel Gabel, Heather Nau­man, Emily Miller, Anne John­son, Mary Young, Scott Bai­ley and Cody Reese by one year con­tract for the 2012/2013 school year.

Employ Matthew Jones, Alli­son Rush­ley, Megan Williamson, Kevin Load­man, Brett Behn­feldt, Christo­pher Rupe, and Kelly Givens by two year con­tract for the 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 school years.

Employ Sasha O’Leary, Can­dace Thomp­son, Tasha Ter­rill and Scott Wat­son by three year con­tract for the 2012/2013 through 2014/2015 school years.

Employ Judith Sell­ers, Joan Ors­born, Lisa King, Kelly Stan­nard, and Rebecca Thur­neyssen by five year con­tract for the 2012/2013 through 2016/2017 school years.

Employ Cer­ti­fied Per­son­nel by Con­tin­u­ing Con­tract: Kayla Ross, Nic­hole Snively, Eliz­a­beth Boggs, Amy Flem­ing, Jes­sica Bea­com, Monty Maceyko, Amy Hoyng and Kim­berly Lovely.

Employ Bus Dri­ver Jody Keller by One Year Con­tract for the remain­der of the 2011/2012 school year.

In other busi­ness, the board approved a stay of nego­ti­a­tions with the State Employ­ment Rela­tions Board U. E. Local #741. On March 26 the Local #741 filed a notice to nego­ti­ate on behalf of non-classified employ­ees with the the State Employ­ment Rela­tions Board. On March 29 the clas­si­fied employ­ees requested a vote of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion by that union. Since the board has a ‘good faith doubt’ whether Local #741 will remain as exclu­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of non-classified employ­ees because of the elec­tion request by clas­si­fied employ­ees, the school’s legal coun­sel has rec­om­mended the board hold off on the nego­ti­a­tions until the ques­tion of who will rep­re­sent the employ­ees is settled.

Food pro­gram Direc­tor Deb­bie Hart invited every­one to the Break­fast With Mom May 8, 9 and 11th K and 1st grade moms on the 8th, 2nd and 3rd on 9th, and 4th and 5th on the 11th.

Board mem­ber Bill Short announced his daugh­ter, Whit­ney (Class of 2006), was accepted into law school last week at the Uni­ver­sity of Las Vegas. She will start this fall.

As per a pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion in March, school lunch prices will increase 25 cents for the 2012–2013 school year.

The next reg­u­lar board meet­ing will be held May 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the Band Room.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Apr 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.