Mt. Gilead BOE selects officers for 2013, considers new score board

By Tay­lor Kaser -
Offi­cers were appointed to lead the Mt. Gilead Board of Edu­ca­tion at their first meet­ing of the year on Jan­u­ary 3.
Jeff Sweeney was reap­pointed to serve as the board’s pres­i­dent and Keith Rogers assumed the role of vice pres­i­dent for the 2013 cal­en­der year. Mem­bers serv­ing as liaisons to the Ohio School Boards Asso­ci­a­tion will be Sharon Kin­cade as the board’s leg­isla­tive liai­son, Vir­gil Sta­ley as the stu­dent achieve­ment liai­son and Jeff Sweeney as the pub­lic records liai­son.
Brett Sander, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Slam Dunk Sports Mar­ket­ing, LLC addressed the board, lay­ing out an avenue for the board to con­sider in replac­ing the score board at the foot­ball field.
Sander explained that his com­pany takes care of locat­ing local spon­sors for the project. The spon­sors who donate money will then have an adver­tise­ment for their busi­ness on the new board.
Sander explained, “There’s no cost or risk from the school’s per­spec­tive.” Slam Dunk would assume respon­si­bil­ity for rais­ing the needed funds, using their time and energy.
Local busi­nesses in the vil­lage will be con­tacted along with some cor­po­rate busi­nesses located nearby, like Mei­jer, said Sander.
A basic new board will prob­a­bly cost between $20,000-$25,000, said Smith. Boards with addi­tional fea­tures do have a higher price, but Smith noted that Slam Dunk boards are qual­ity made and come with a war­ranty.
Sweeney asked what hap­pens when the process is well under way, but not all of the nec­es­sary funds have been col­lected?
Out of 100 projects, Smith assured the board that 95 of those are com­pleted. He explained that if a short­age of funds occurs, the board can decide to make up the remain­ing cost. In some instances, he said that Slam Dunk will absorb the remain­ing bal­ance.
Issues with the score board at the foot­ball field have been ongo­ing, the entire board agreed. Sweeney gave Super­in­ten­dent Jeff Thomp­son per­mis­sion to pro­ceed in draw­ing up a pre­lim­i­nary con­tract agree­ment with Slam Dunk while the board delib­er­ates.
Super­in­ten­dent Thomp­son gave his reg­u­lar report, stat­ing, “We’ve been watch­ing what we spend care­fully.” It was high­lighted that some tech­nol­ogy update costs are not com­ing from the gen­eral bud­get. He also noted that data is being col­lected for a finan­cial meet­ing, to give the board a bet­ter view of the school’s finances in late Jan­u­ary or early Feb­ru­ary.
The fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from the Super­in­ten­dent were approved: Sarah Thiel will be a sub­sti­tute teacher for the 2012–2013 school year, a leave with­out pay for Michelle Chea­dle, the pay­ment of $7,500 to Michael Heath Prin­ci­pal of the Tomor­row Cen­ter from a fed­eral grant for achiev­ing goals set out in the Teacher Incen­tive Com­pet­i­tive Grant.
It was noted that the funds Heath is receiv­ing are from the fed­eral grant that he applied for and received, not from the dis­trict. The fed­eral grant is avail­able to schools that are strug­gling, but are improv­ing and reach­ing goals out­lined in the grant. Sweeney noted that Heath has accom­plished acquir­ing over $1 mil­lion for the Tomor­row Cen­ter.
The board’s next meet­ing will be on Jan­u­ary 15 at 7 p.m at the Cherry St. admin­is­tra­tive offices.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Jan 9 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.