Cardington faculty, admin proposes classes held during fair week

By Eve­lyn Long -

A dis­cus­sion on the pro­posed school cal­en­dar for 2013–2014 prompted a debate at the March 11 Card­ing­ton School Board meet­ing about either chang­ing the start date of the Mor­row County Fair or hav­ing stu­dents attend classes dur­ing fair week.

The cal­en­dar was pre­pared and approved through a con­tract with the admin­is­tra­tion and fac­ulty. The cal­en­dar calls for the open­ing day of school for stu­dents to be August 19 and con­tinue through the first three days of the Mor­row County Fair with no school August 29–30 and resum­ing on Sep­tem­ber 3.

It was explained the teach­ers feel they need these early days of con­tact with the stu­dents for assess­ment because the assess­ment dates for grades 3–8 are set by the state for the last week of April and first week of May. This is the first time assess­ment results are tied to teacher evaluation.

Board mem­ber Tim Brake said, “I’m not leav­ing any grey area here: I’m not in favor of going to school dur­ing fair week. How­ever, if it’s for ele­men­tary test­ing, let’s move the start date. We do have third graders who par­tic­i­pate in the fair. Mon­day is move-in day. That’s a big day at the fair — I’ve been involved and been on the Mor­row County Fair Board,” he said. “Notice in the Mor­row County Sen­tinel where 4-H is grow­ing — look at the levy sup­port– 4-H had a levy on and it was highly sup­ported. This county and com­mu­nity sup­port the Mor­row County Fair. My old­est daughter’s fair wins and schol­ar­ship money paid her first two years of college.”

“If we need more days for test­ing, then start ear­lier, but take fair week off,” Brake con­tin­ued. “I see infor­ma­tion on there about excus­ing. I don’t think it’s right to have these kids choose. If they want to par­tic­i­pate in the fair — some of these projects are year-long projects. I was against start­ing before fair week. The num­bers reflect in this — Do we need three more days of test­ing in the ele­men­tary?” he asked.

Super­in­ten­dent Brian Petrie noted the teach­ers feel they need that time to do the test­ing with­out inter­rup­tion. He drew a sim­i­lar­ity to those stu­dents who come to school at 7:30 a.m. to prac­tice for ath­let­ics or band. Ask­ing them to do that is no dif­fer­ent from ask­ing stu­dents to go to school those fair days. He also referred to other fairs such as the Loudonville Street Fair where stu­dents go to school all but the last two days of the event.

Board mem­ber Mar­i­lyn Davis said she had grown up with the fair.

“I was a 4-H mem­ber and we’re talk­ing about stu­dents who are good stu­dents in this school dis­trict and are good stu­dents because of their 4-H back­ground and their par­tic­i­pa­tion at the county level,” she stated. “In the past, schools par­tic­i­pated at all lev­els — the band, booths, dis­plays, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, not just 4-H. We’re talk­ing about test­ing. If our teach­ers are doing their jobs and our stu­dents are per­form­ing well it would not mat­ter when the test comes– it’s like a test any­time in col­lege– they have to be ready. I thought I needed extra time but kids need time to be kids — and our county needs to sup­port our kids. we have dis­ci­pline prob­lems in our county because we don’t have enough kids par­tic­i­pat­ing in activ­i­ties like 4-H and learn­ing to make the best better.”

Board mem­ber Jim Clinger said all four schools would like to get more updates in before test­ing and the fair board could solve that prob­lem by mov­ing the dates of the fair.

Davis said it is a State of Ohio choice.

“It’s not the Mor­row County Fair Board that makes the deci­sion for the fair date,” he said. “They don’t dare over­lap with other county fairs.”

Board mem­ber Chuck Jones said, “It’s not bal­anced as well as it could be — I can see both sides — I think you have to have a bal­ance between the start of school and the fair date. It seems like it’s one sided.”

Davis said North­mor does well on their tests and they start the day after Labor Day.

“We need all four schools together on this,” Davis said.

Board mem­ber Pat Clark noted a lot of par­ents take that week off and camp with their kids. “I agree to start earlier.”

Spring vaca­tion on the pro­posed cal­en­dar would be March 20–24, 2014, and there would be no school on Good Fri­day, April 18, 2014.

The board agreed to table the mat­ter until the April meet­ing when they will vote on a calendar.

Recog­ni­tion from the Ohio Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion was noted when the Cardington-Lincoln Board of Edu­ca­tion met in reg­u­lar ses­sion on March 11.

Supt Brian Petrie said Scott Hard­wick, prin­ci­pal of grades K-6, and Joe Mills, prin­ci­pal of Grades 7–12, had received let­ters from the DOE rec­og­niz­ing the schools as 2012 Schools of Promise for the first time.

“Your school is in a pres­ti­gious group of 163 schools that achieved this honor on the Local Report Card for the 2011–2012 school year. Strate­gies by you and your staff to close the math­e­mat­ics and read­ing achieve­ment gap for stu­dents who rep­re­sent a range of socioe­co­nomic and eth­nic back­grounds are work­ing and we hope you will share them with other Ohio schools.

“The Ohio Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion plans to spot­light your school as a strong exam­ple of what is pos­si­ble when stu­dents, edu­ca­tors, par­ents and com­mu­nity mem­bers come together and believe that all stu­dents can succeed.”

In the com­ing weeks you will receive an offi­cial Schools of Promise ban­ner to dis­play in your school build­ing.” The let­ter was signed Michael Sawyer, Act­ing Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Information.

In other mat­ters, the board approved pay­ment of bills for Feb­ru­ary total­ing $910,178.85 writ­ten on war­rant checks 82527 through 82646.

They also approved;

- The Feb­ru­ary 2013 finan­cial report

- The Res­o­lu­tion accept­ing the amounts and rates of tax levies as deter­mined by the Bud­get Com­mis­sion and cer­ti­fy­ing them to the county auditor

- The cre­ation of an account for the High School Book Club

- A con­tract with the Ohio School Board Asso­ci­a­tion for Con­sul­ta­tion Services

- Mem­ber­ship in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Edu­ca­tional Coun­cil (MEC) dues $476.39

- Mem­ber­ship in the Ohio School Boards Asso­ci­a­tion (OSBA), 2013 dues includ­ing OSBA School Man­age­ment News — $4172.00

Also approved was a new account with Farm­ers Cit­i­zens Bank and Per­sh­ing LLC for funds for the Mar­garet Miller Schol­ar­ship Fund.

The board approved the ter­mi­na­tion and clos­ing out of the account with Edward Jones for the Mar­garet Miller Schol­ar­ship Fund.

Under per­son­nel, the board approved the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of time and dis­tance for reg­u­lar Bus Route 10, Nicole Hiett, from 3.3 hours per day to 3.5 hours per day.

The board was given the fol­low­ing pol­icy updates to give a first read by the next meet­ing: Bylaw 0165.2 Spe­cial meet­ing; Pol­icy 2270: Reli­gion in the Cur­ricu­lum (Revised); Pol­icy 2431: Inter­scholas­tic Ath­let­ics (Revised); Pol­icy 2623.02: Third grade Guar­an­tee (Revised); Pol­icy 3131: Reduc­tion in Staff (Revised ) Pol­icy 5515.01; Safe Oper­a­tion of Motor­ized Util­ity Vehi­cles by Stu­dents (New); Pol­icy 6110: Grant Funds (Revised); Pol­icy 6320: Pur­chases (Revised); Pol­icy 6550: Travel Pay­ment and Reim­burse­ment (Revised).

The march­ing band overnight trips from April 1–6, 2013 to Dis­ney World/Florida with direc­tor Tom DiN­u­oscio were approved.

The addi­tion of a ninth spe­cial edu­ca­tion stu­dent to the Mid-Ohio ESC morn­ing pre– school edu­ca­tion class and waiver request to ODE in order to meet the spe­cific needs of the spe­cific stu­dents was approved.

Sev­er­ance pay to Deb Harper in the amount of $7,431.13 and to Dan Bow­ers in the amount of $39.16 was approved.

The con­sent agenda was approved as fol­lows: One year sup­ple­men­tal con­tracts which expire June 30, 2013 were approved for Zach Hamp­ton, var­sity assis­tant base­ball (vol­un­teer); Dono­van Kline, JV base­ball head coach; Chris Pearl, JV base­ball, vol­un­teer and Gary Hamp­ton, JV base­ball, volunteer.

Clas­si­fied employ­ees approved include Chris­tine Drury and Bon­nie Daily, aides.

Lois Ben­nett was approved as a clas­si­fied sub­sti­tute custodian.

Prin­ci­pal Scott Hard­wick and Assis­tant Prin­ci­pal Mar­sha Lev­er­ing reported on activ­i­ties in Grades K-6 and Joe Mills, prin­ci­pal of grades 7–12, gave a report on their activ­i­ties. John Brehm, ath­letic direc­tor, said the win­ter sports pro­gram will be held March 26 at 7 p.m.

The board adjourned the reg­u­lar meet­ing at 8:14 p.m. and entered exec­u­tive ses­sion based on ORC 121.22(G) 1,2,3,4,5, and 6. This ses­sion closed at 9:48 p.m. with no fur­ther action taken.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Mar 20 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.