West Central Board hears update on project to redesign school entrances

Details

Published: Friday, 07 July 2017 21:12

FRANCESVILLE - The West Central School Board heard an update on plans to redesign the school entrances for safety purposes at its July meeting.

Adam Weesner from Barton-Coe-Vilamaa presented tentative plans on the redesign of the school entrances and the utilization of space project. If approved, the project will begin during the spring of 2018.

There will be no tax increase with this project in the Debt Service Fund. A bond will be paid off as this new project begins.

Superintendent Don Street reported on the following:

• The maintenance and custodial staff are making a great deal of progress with the summer projects. The new doors are installed in the north end of the high school and the carpet project in the buildings is almost complete.
• The administration is continuing to search for qualified staff to fill the current vacancies. The board reviewed current staff needs.
• The positive wind turbine production was reviewed.
• The updated West Central brochures were shared and will be mailed.
• Street shared information from Dr. Larry DeBoer, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. With the Indiana Law having farm land decrease in assessed valuation, school corporations with the largest revenue losses are those with a high share of farmland in net assessed value. If farmland is a large share of a school's net assessed value, this shifts taxes to non-farm taxpayers.
• The board reviewed the Co-curricular and Extra-curricular Eligibility for Non-Full Time Student Enrolled procedure.
• A tentative review of the Spring 2017 ISTEP scores were shared.
• Congratulations are extended to the West Central Board on being recognized as an Outstanding School Board by the Indiana School Boards Association.
• The annual Indiana State Police bus inspection was successful. The board extended its appreciation to Jeff Barngrover for his dedication to the West Central School Corporation as the mechanic on the school buses for several years.

Personnel Items

The board voted to terminate employment of high school secretary Vickey Thompson.

The board accepted the resignations of elementary school music teacher Anna DeRoo, chemistry teacher Bobby Quimpo, art teacher Natalie Dickinson and student council sponsor Lisa Baker.

The board agreed to the employment of Vicky Alva as high school secretary and Lisa Baker as Sunshine Society sponsor.

Conference requests are approved for Marcia Kennedy to attend the AdvancED Fall Conference, and for Patrick Culp to attend the School Safety Conference.

Board Action Items

The board voted to approve Shaw Haselby to apply for a non-standard teaching waiver to teach Introduction to Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and Supervised Agricultural Experiences.

The board voted to approve the disposal of worthless surplus personal property that has no market value as per IC 5-22-22-8.

The board voted to approve the renewal of the Secondary School Agreement with Crossing National for the 2017-18 school year.

Approval was given for the Cooperative School Employee Contracts for the 2017-18 school year as presented.

Discussion/Report Items

Middle/high school principal Pat Culp reported that Architectural Drafting and Design instructor, Tyler DeMoss will be using Vertex programming for the classroom. West Central is the only high school in the United States that is using the software. Ivy Tech and several other educational institutions are using the software. Vertex Systems is a leading Finnish CAD and PDM software company providing state of the art solutions for design. (See separate article in PulaskiPost)

Elementary school principal Dan Zylstra has coordinated the electronic use of the photocopier as a fax machine. This will reduce the use of a telephone line.