Lack of add'l state funding leaves schools struggling

By Randa Wagner

Edu­ca­tion is chang­ing for Ohio Schools, thanks to House Bill 555 and Gov­er­nor Kasich’s pro­posed bud­get for 2013. The new stan­dards for stu­dents and teach­ers has been a major topic of dis­cus­sion at Mor­row County School board meet­ings, and Northmor’s Thurs­day evening meet­ing was no exception.

Super­in­ten­dent Dr. Brent Winand did not mince words express­ing his view­point on the lack of addi­tional fund­ing and new guide­lines for the next school year.

“The North­mor School Dis­trict stands to get zero dol­lars in terms of any increase and, over time, will prob­a­bly decline in fund­ing,” he said. “That’s true of all Mor­row County Schools. It’s a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. Olen­tangy Schools gets a 331% increase, Ontario Schools gets a 55% increase, Dublin City Schools gets a 25% increase, and North­mor Schools — along with the 12 Appalachian area school dis­tricts — receive zero per­cent. If that’s the solu­tion to DeRolf (equity & ade­quacy of school fund­ing), then his inter­pre­ta­tion is tremen­dously dif­fer­ent than what mine or 613 other baf­fled super­in­ten­dents in the State of Ohio are. I’d like to be able to pro­pose to you the governor’s for­mula to arrive at his fund­ing – I have no clue. I can’t fig­ure it out.”

He said he hopes the rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the leg­is­la­ture show some com­mon sense and encour­ages every­one to con­tact them.

“The end result is going to be, even for schools like North­mor that have been fis­cally con­ser­v­a­tive for­ever and haven’t had to ask for addi­tional fund­ing, if the state con­tin­ues to do this, we’ll have no choice,” Winand said, allud­ing to a future levy. “Costs go up and rev­enue goes down – we can’t do that for­ever. We’re not in that boat yet, but if this pro­posal for edu­ca­tional fund­ing stays in place with­out changes, it will drive us and other school dis­tricts to the ballot.’

He acknowl­edged the governor’s pro­posed bud­get is not nec­es­sar­ily the final bud­get that is approved by the Ohio House and Senate.

When North­mor Junior High School Prin­ci­pal Den­nis Ervin reported on strides the staff was tak­ing to meet the demands of the new teacher eval­u­a­tion stan­dards set by the state, Winand was equally vocal.

“I think it’s too rapid,” Winand main­tained. “I don’t think it can be ade­quately approached in the time­line that’s pro­posed and there’s no fund­ing to sup­port it. If there was fund­ing to sup­port it, maybe we could buy into it a lit­tle better.”

“In my entire career, there have never been as many sweep­ing changes in edu­ca­tion as there is right now,” Ervin stated. “At first, when we learned what was going to change, we were over­whelmed. Now a lot of things we’re doing are really good things and [the staff] is really more fas­ci­nated with and look­ing for­ward to the changes.”

Ervin said it’s a huge under­tak­ing but some­thing he thinks will be good in the long run. He added the staff is also try­ing to ‘come to grips’ with the new Ohio Teacher Eval­u­a­tion Sys­tem which will be put into place next year. Ervin said the staff wants to under­stand what they need to do to per­form well on the evaluation.

“The teach­ers are busy right now try­ing to build a thor­ough under­stand of the new com­mon core cur­ricu­lum,” Ervin said. “They’re going to use that infor­ma­tion to build some­thing new we call “Stu­dent Learn­ing Objec­tives” for their courses. It is some­thing that we use data to define learn­ing tar­gets for each of the stu­dents in their classes. They will col­lect data at the begin­ning of the school year and make pro­jec­tions about how much knowl­edge those kids will gain over the course of the year, then do test­ing at the end of the year to deter­mine if they reached their targets.”

Regard­ing other mat­ters at the mid­del school, Ervin reported the North­mor Dis­trict Spelling Bee would take place Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 26 at 9:30 a.m. March 11 – 15 is OGT Week in the junior high and high school. Fifth graders are going to Mohi­can School March 18 – 22. Sixth and sev­enth graders are cur­rently select­ing their class requests for next year. Aca­d­e­mic assess­ment test­ing is April 23 – 30.

Board busi­ness

The board approved an amended cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of esti­mated resources for 2013 offered by Trea­surer Tina Gabler. Gabler said she looks over the bud­get mid­way through the year and updates the num­bers when nec­es­sary; in this case, sev­eral grants came in later in the year. Gabler must cer­tify incom­ing rev­enue with the county auditor’s office. She will be updat­ing the five year fore­cast this Spring for sub­mis­sion to the state.

Also approved were amended per­ma­nent appro­pri­a­tions for 2013, which (was affected by the addi­tional rev­enue and) cer­ti­fies pro­jected spend­ing for the fis­cal year.

The board approved the 2013–2014 School Year Cal­en­dar, which includes addi­tional delayed starts for pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment ses­sions for staff.

“We’re expe­ri­enc­ing tremen­dous change, man­dated by the state,” Supt. Dr. Brent Winand said. “The only way to deal with that is through pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment for the staff.”

Since July, the board has been dis­cussing hav­ing some of the sur­round­ing wooded area ‘tim­bered.’ An area res­i­dent has pro­posed a con­tract to fell trees and sell the wood. The pro­posed cost to the board is ten per­cent of the total sale of the wood. Winand sug­gested adding to the con­tract a clause reserv­ing the right to refuse all bids and to set a win­dow of time to have the job completed.

Board mem­ber Dan Sipes said due to the pos­si­ble pres­ence of the Emer­ald Ash Borer, there could be some restric­tions as to when wood can be moved. Winand said he would check into that pos­si­bil­ity, adding that because of sports sched­ules, the work prob­a­bly can­not be per­formed this Spring or next Fall. Board Pres­i­dent Car­lyle Smith sug­gested the work be wrapped up six months after a bid is accepted. For now, the board approved the pro­posed con­tract with the sug­gested amendments.

Under new busi­ness, the board:

- agreed to attend the Cen­tral Region of the Ohio School Boards Asso­ci­a­tion Meet­ing on March 19, 2013 to honor Dan Sipe for 20 years of board ser­vice and Jeff Whisler for 10 years of Board service.

- approve the North Cen­tral Ohio Com­puter Coop­er­a­tive (NCOCC) Inter­net Ser­vice Provider Con­tract for the period of time from July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014 in the amount of $40,279.60.

- approve the North Cen­tral Ohio Com­puter Coop­er­a­tive (NCOCC) Tele­phone Con­tract for the period of time from July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014 in the amount of $7,100.00

- accepted the Han­nah Hat­field dona­tion of equip­ment, books, instruc­tion cards and cas­settes to the North­mor Mul­ti­ple Dis­abil­i­ties Class. It is esti­mated the total dona­tion value to be approx­i­mately $98.00.

- joined the Ohio School Boards Asso­ci­a­tion for the 2013–2014 school year. The total con­tract amount is $4,051.00.

Superintendent’s Rec­om­men­da­tions

Under employ­ment, the board: accepted the let­ter of res­ig­na­tion from Amber Wheeler for the posi­tion of Fam­ily and Con­sumer Sci­ence Instruc­tor (effec­tive with the end of the 2012–2013 school year); employed for the 2012 — 2013 school year: Ash­ley Lusetti as a teacher in the After School Assis­tance Pro­gram funded through the 21st Cen­tury Grant, three hours per day; Mary Bishop as a full time dou­ble route bus dri­ver from Feb­ru­ary 25, 2013 through the end of the 2012–2013 school year; Jeff Hub­schman as a Cer­ti­fied Sub­ur­ban Dri­ver; Mary Ann Stiver as a Cer­ti­fied Sub­ur­ban Dri­ver; Rich Roach as the Junior Var­sity Soft­ball Coach; Jessie Massey as the Junior High Soft­ball Coach; rec­og­nize Jerry West as a Vol­un­teer Assis­tant Soft­ball Coach; employ David Mor­gan as an Assis­tant Track Coach; Kevin Ruhl as a Junior High Track Coach; Lau­ren Rausch as a Junior High Track Coach; Bran­don Strain as a Junior High Track Coach; rec­og­nize Chris Kaschube as a Vol­un­teer Assis­tant Base­ball Coach, Todd Wise­man as a Vol­un­teer Assis­tant Base­ball Coach, Russ Mont­gomery as a Vol­un­teer Assis­tant Base­ball Coach, and Mark Wise­man as a Vol­un­teer Assis­tant Base­ball Coach; employ Jere­miah Howe as the Junior High Base­ball Coach; and Bren­dan Gwirtz as the Junior Var­sity Base­ball Coach.

All con­tracts are pend­ing the com­ple­tion of all employ­ment requirements.

The board went into exec­u­tive ses­sion to dis­cuss details rel­e­vant to the secu­rity arrange­ment for the build­ing and emer­gency response pro­to­cols. No fur­ther busi­ness was conducted.

The next North­mor Board of Edu­ca­tion Meet­ing will be on Thurs­day, March 14, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. in the North­mor Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing Room.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.