Highland board honors athletes, band; hears from public

By Randa Wagner -

Stu­dents received awards, the pro­posed soc­cer pro­gram was exam­ined, and the pub­lic had issues to address at the Novem­ber 13 High­land School Board meeting.

Com­mu­nity mem­ber Chris Miller gave the board his per­sonal assess­ment of the past soc­cer sea­son to gauge if soc­cer should be adopted as fall var­sity sport at High­land High School.

Chris Miller didn’t mince words when he gave the board his eval­u­a­tion of the pro­posed soc­cer program.

Miller said he used four key per­for­mance met­rics in grad­ing each assess­ment on a scale of 0 – 5. Miller’s assessment:

Player inter­est, com­mit­ment and skill level. Score: 2. In grades 9–12, he said 24 girls signed up and only 4 showed up. Out of the 20 boys, only 10 showed and played (as a co-ed team).

Miller felt a min­i­mum of 16 high school play­ers were needed for a suc­cess­ful team. Of the avail­able play­ers, only 4 had high school level com­pe­ti­tion abil­ity, in his opin­ion. He felt there was not an ade­quate com­mit­ment from the stu­dent body at this time to field a team for next year.

Field and prac­tice facil­ity. Score: 3. The team cur­rently uses the field between the multi pur­pose field near the ele­men­tary school

Coach­ing and player inter­ac­tion. Score: 0 “This, by far, is the most dis­ap­point­ing in the coaches, play­ers and par­ents that watched the game,” Miller said. “The coach actively and ver­bally addressed par­ents and play­ers in a neg­a­tive and abu­sive way. He allowed par­ents on the coach­ing side­line who also ver­bally and, at times phys­i­cally, addressed the play­ers in a neg­a­tive and threat­en­ing way, This com­plete dis­play of unpro­fes­sional behav­ior reflected neg­a­tively on High­land, its play­ers, and HYO as an organization.”

Miller’s rec­om­men­da­tion to the school board: HYO would secure a coach that con­forms to the Ohio High School Ath­letic Asso­ci­a­tion stan­dards, a coach that has a valid coach­ing license and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and no par­ent under any cir­cum­stances should be allowed to coach from the side­line for any rea­son. HYO has not demon­strated this year, to my per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion, that they can secure proper coach­ing that reflects a pro­fes­sional behav­ior, stan­dards of our com­mu­nity, and is in the best inter­est of the players.

HYO as an orga­ni­za­tion. Score: 2 “They did a great job in sched­ul­ing and coor­di­nat­ing games with par­ents,” Miller noted. “But because of the issues with coach­ing, side­line inci­dents, fail­ure to respond in an imme­di­ate and direct way to numer­ous emails and phone calls, this approach has seg­mented and sep­a­rated play­ers and par­ents and cre­ated a hos­tile, neg­a­tive environment.”

Miller’s rec­om­men­da­tion was HYO needs more time to develop a pro­gram and address those issues.

“I would con­sider a pass­ing score to be a 15 out of 20 (over­all),” Miller said. “This year I’d score the pro­gram a 7. I would rec­om­mend to the board to reject mak­ing soc­cer a var­sity sport for High­land for the 2013–2014 school year.”

A copy of the assess­ment was given to board members.

Stu­dents on hand to receive their award were, from left: Logan Eber­sole (State CC qual­i­fier) and Kam Terry (All Ohio Volleyball).

Vol­ley­ball seniors hon­ored at the school board meet­ing were, from left: Heather Thacker, Abby Gar­cia, Macy Winkelfoos.

Foot­ball seniors (pos­ing with school board mem­bers) rec­og­nized at the Novem­ber board meet­ing were, from left: Andrew Kougher, Jonathan Wal­ters, Nick Shiv­ers, Tye Sher­man, Colton Stan­ley, Sly Sher­man, Gabe Ran­dall, Shawn Gray, Shawn Beltz.

Board reports

Board mem­ber Bill Short the entire school board attended the Ohio School Board Asso­ci­a­tion Con­ven­tion that morn­ing (of Nov. 13).

Board mem­ber John Mess­mer said he appre­ci­ated the sup­port he has received from the com­mu­nity so far in his first month on the board.

Board Pres­i­dent Eric Thacker said he attended the ele­men­tary pro­duc­tion put on by the first and third graders, attribut­ing Mrs. Hinkle’s tremen­dous patience to result­ing in an excel­lent program.

Super­in­ten­dent Bill Dodds com­mented about the call sys­tem direc­tions were placed on the web­site a few weeks ago and they didn’t work.

“When our data was loaded onto their sys­tem, they took a col­umn that had ran­dom num­bers and said put those in as your student’s ID num­bers. They didn’t’ match up. The sys­tem is now fixed and there are steps on the web­site to walk you through it.”

Dodds said in trans­porta­tion, they have faced some chal­lenges this past month and a half. “We’ve been short on sub­sti­tutes and have been shuf­fling around and try­ing to make sure we get to kids as timely as we can. We will be hir­ing a full time sub­sti­tute posi­tion so, in the morn­ing, there’s not a panic to search for sub­sti­tutes. Some­one will be ready and wait­ing in case some­one calls off. What that does for us is keeps our trans­porta­tion super­vi­sor in the garage so when par­ents call, there’s some­one to answer.”

Supt. Dodds offered a state­ment on the sit­u­a­tion with Princ­pals Winkelf­fos and Knetch­ley (now resolved) and the ball­field debate.

Pub­lic Participation

A par­ent expressed con­cern that a full time sub­sti­tute dri­ver is not enough, feel­ing a full time dis­patcher should be in place at all times.

Regard­ing the issue involv­ing the prin­ci­pals, par­ents of ele­men­tary school stu­dents expressed con­cerned that the stu­dent accused of the mis­con­duct was still attend­ing school while the prin­ci­pals were not.

Another par­ent com­mented on the sit­u­a­tion with the prin­ci­pals, say­ing she felt they needed to be back in the school as soon as possible.

“They are highly respected and very missed,” one par­ent told board mem­bers of the prin­ci­pals. “This is an unfor­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion and I hope you’re tak­ing it very seriously.”

“My ques­tion is, when there is a child that is a touchy-feeling type child that has been brought to prin­ci­pals, coun­selors and teach­ers, and this child has been ‘assessed’ and deemed ‘ok’ to come back, but still con­tin­ues to act out on sit­u­a­tions that are very inap­pro­pri­ate, when is enough, enough?” asked one par­ent, “to when this stu­dent can be no longer allowed to come back to the school?”

“Any­time there’s a safety sit­u­a­tion or con­cern with any stu­dent or a group of stu­dents, we address it,” Supt. Dodds replied. “If nec­es­sary, for the safety of that child or other chil­dren, there are safety plans put into place. That’s our process. If some­one else’s rights are vio­lated or other stu­dents are at risk, then some­times we have to take dif­fer­ent steps.”

“What are we sup­posed to do until it hap­pens?” asked the par­ent, “because it’s going to happen.”

“There have been very few inci­dents at the ele­men­tary school and they have all been addressed to my knowl­edge,” Supt. Dodds maintained.

“But the prob­lem is still there,” said another par­ent. “It’s still going on”

“We are a pub­lic school that edu­cates all chil­dren,” Supt. Dodds stated. “We can­not pick and choose who comes. Chil­dren have many chal­lenges in many dif­fer­ent ways.”

Another par­ent said she knew of more than one inci­dent and it’s an ongo­ing prob­lem that began before the schools merged.

“It hap­pened last year and it’s hap­pen­ing again this year,” she said. “A lot of par­ents are done with it. We’re tired of hav­ing to worry about our chil­dren, being touched in inap­pro­pri­ate ways. Enough is enough! This is push­ing it.”

Bill Short said he’s had three meet­ings with one of the affected par­ents and it’s dif­fi­cult, because the school board has to fol­low the laws of the State of Ohio, which acknowl­edges the civil rights and pri­vacy issues of all students.

“We will take the infor­ma­tion back and share it fur­ther,” Board Pres­i­dent Thacker said of the issue. “We do have the right per­son­nel, and we will con­tinue to work­ing with this issue to ensure all kids are as safe as possible.”

On another sub­ject, Mike Baker, of Marengo, asked Bill Short out­right if the board was plan­ning on sell­ing the ball­fields in Marengo in the next year.

“Absolutely not,” Short replied, “and, hope­fully, not in ten years. They’re not expected to be for sale and this board has no rea­son to dis­cuss sell­ing land. We’re try­ing to not do that.”

Per­son­nel

rec­om­men­da­tions

The fol­low­ing were approved for sup­ple­men­tal con­tracts for the 2012–2013 school year: Ron Gar­linger, Head Bowl­ing Coach; Amber Brubaker, Vol­un­teer Bowl­ing Coach; Adam Gilmore, Head Wrestling Coach, Rich Williams, M.S. Wrestling Coach; Luke Clemens and Dave Williams, Vol­un­teer Wrestling coaches; Galen Chap­man, Head Girls Bas­ket­ball Coach; Eric Thacker, Vol­un­teer Girls Bas­ket­ball Coach; David Burt, Asst. Girls Bas­ket­ball Coach; Chelsea Squires, 7th Grade Girls Bas­ket­ball Coach; Todd Belcher, 8th Grade Girls Bas­ket­ball Coach; Joseph Oder, M.S. Bas­ket­ball Asst. Coach; Leslie Mar­tin, M.S. Cheer­lead­ing (Win­ter); Denise Stil­well and Jackie May, H.S. Cheer­leader (Winter/Split); Heather Nau­man, In-The-Know Co-Advisor (Split); and Joseph Oder, M.S. Sports Coordinator.

Mar­tin Zeger was approved a con­tin­u­ing con­tract as Groundskeeper and Enoch Adkins, Jr. was approved as a sub­sti­tute bus driver.

The next reg­u­lar High­land Board meet­ing will be Wednes­day, Dec. 12 in the high school cafe­to­rium at 7 p.m.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Dec 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.