Highland receives ballfield lease offer from Marengo Council

By RANDA WAGNER -

The High­land Board of Edu­ca­tion has received an offer from the Vil­lage of Marengo to assume the lease on the ball­fields adja­cent to the for­mer High­land West Ele­men­tary in Marengo.

Vil­lage of Marengo Vil­lage Coun­cil Mem­ber Bill Carmickle addressed the board at their June 13 reg­u­lar meet­ing about the let­ter coun­cil sent to them May 31 request­ing leas­ing the ball­fields. Cur­rently, the fields are under the care and juris­dic­tion of the High­land Local School Dis­trict. The Vil­lage of Marengo main­tains the school dis­trict would save the cost of elec­tric ser­vice and lia­bil­ity from injury and prop­erty dam­age by leas­ing the fields to the Vil­lage of Marengo. Coun­cil acknowl­edged the prop­erty is owned by High­land Schools and would con­tinue to be and, as pay­ment for the long-term lease, the vil­lage would cover the cost of a pole instal­la­tion and elec­tric con­nec­tion to the con­ces­sion stand. The esti­mated cost of this work would be $2000 and con­sid­ered pay­ment in full for the lease.

Thacker thanked Carmickle for giv­ing the board the cor­re­spon­dence in writ­ing and said the board is ‘pro­cess­ing the infor­ma­tion and not look­ing to make a deci­sion at this time.’

Board Pres­i­dent Eric Thacker thanked Trea­surer Jon Mason for his con­tri­bu­tion to the School Fund­ing Forum that was held at Card­ing­ton Schools the pre­vi­ous evening.

“He did our dis­trict very proud,” Thacker related. “if any of you are inter­ested in a sub-level view of how fund­ing is received and exe­cuted for schools, he has an excel­lent brief­ing pack­age that I’m sure he can dis­sem­i­nate for you.”

At the forum, Mason explained the three fund­ing sources for pub­lic schools and how it’s a mat­ter of ‘polit­i­cal sci­ence.’ He noted how fund­ing changes with tran­si­tions of state con­trol and, recently, the state’s fund­ing sys­tem changed from an Evi­dence Based For­mula to a Bridge For­mula. Mason showed how com­pli­cated the Bridge For­mula is through a slide show pre­sen­ta­tion. There are 5,625 stu­dents in Mor­row County, and financ­ing is based on enroll­ment and prop­erty val­ues in a district.

Super­in­ten­dent Dr. Bill Dodds and board mem­bers rec­og­nized and con­grat­u­lated sev­eral stu­dents and staff for recent achieve­ments, namely: senior McKen­zie Rhodes, the Mt. Ver­non News Player of the Year who received a soft­ball schol­ar­ship to the Uni­ver­sity of Akron; senior Jason Hertz and MOAC Base­ball Player of the year, who is headed to the Uni­ver­sity of North­west­ern Ohio and is a four-year medal win­ner in base­ball and foot­ball; MOAC Base­ball Coach of the Year Travis Church; Employee of the Month Andrew Collins; Employee of the Month Ralph Igo; Diana Keyes and Kim Stephens, for their work in the board office when the staff was short-handed.

Dur­ing the treasurer’s report, Mason reported bids are out for ren­o­va­tions for the foot­ball field, bleach­ers and restrooms. Bids are due June 27 and a spe­cial meet­ing will be held Thurs­day, June 28 at 3 p.m. in the High­land Dis­trict Board office to review the bids and hold a work session.

Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion Coor­di­na­tor Pam Mosier-Arnold reported recently the dis­trict went through an Ohio Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion on-site review, and one of the com­po­nents was to notify the com­mu­nity of how High­land spends their Title I funds.

“Par­ents have input over one per­cent of what we spend,” she explained, “so here are some of the things we’ve spent our funds on: Study Island, the NWA Test­ing Com­po­nents we use to test our stu­dents to see where they’re at in ref­er­ence to how well we think they will do on the stan­dard­ized tests. We also spent it on soft­ware for other edu­ca­tional pur­poses, instruc­tional mate­ri­als and spe­cial edu­ca­tion and Title I teach­ers’ salaries.”

Under employ­ment, the board approved the following:

- the res­ig­na­tion of Title I Read­ing Joan Osborne; Ele­men­tary Teacher Bev­erly Thomp­son; H.S./M.S. Vocal Music instruc­tor Emily Gar­lock and Trans­porta­tion Super­vi­sor Paul Lev­ings, who was appointed to the posi­tion at the May 2012 meeting.

- one-year con­tract approved for 2012–2013 for: Suzanne Kochheiser; Amanda Rig­gle; Danya Clay-Davis; Christy Arbaugh as M.S. Cook/Cashier; and Loretta Copeland as Trans­porta­tion Supervisor.

- a con­tin­u­ing con­tract for Rebecca Van Fos­sen, M.S. Health/Physical Education.

- two-year con­tract (2012 through 2014) for: Ron­nie Dai­ley, Asst. Cus­to­dian; and Michelle Hull, Edu­ca­tional Asst.

- one year sup­ple­men­tal con­tract for 2012–2013 for Danielle Hobbs, Var­sity Cheer Advisor.

The board moved to approve the salary step for the fol­low­ing dis­trict office staff: Diana Keyes, Asst. Trea­surer; Kim­ber­ley Stephens, EMIS Coor­di­na­tor; and Judy Diluliis, Admin­is­tra­tive Asst. A one-time stipend of $1200 will be paid to the Asst. Trea­surer and EMIS Coor­di­na­tor for admin­is­tra­tive duties.

Board Mem­ber Loren Altizer was appointed to serve as the High­land Board of Edu­ca­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the High­land Com­mu­nity Park Board. Altizer was absent for this meeting.

The board went into exec­u­tive ses­sion. The board will hold a retreat for the admin­is­tra­tive staff Tues­day July 17 at 8 a.m. to dis­cuss dis­trict goals, review data for the past school year, and plan for the future.

The next reg­u­lar board meet­ing will be held July 18 at 7 p.m. in the high school band room.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jun 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.