Galion BOE approves agreements, tables building use policy

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

The Galion Board of Edu­ca­tion voted to approve agree­ments for snow removal, copier main­te­nance, Col­lege Access Adviser ser­vices and AVID Cen­ter mem­ber­ship at its orga­ni­za­tional meet­ing Thurs­day, Jan. 5. Revi­sions to the exist­ing build­ing use rental agree­ment and fee sched­ule were tabled.

The revi­sions to the build­ing use agree­ment cen­tered on the sec­tion waiv­ing all charges for school orga­ni­za­tions wish­ing to use the build­ings. The revi­sions clar­i­fied that school orga­ni­za­tions are inter­nal orga­ni­za­tions com­prised only of Galion stu­dents and per­son­nel. Other orga­ni­za­tions pay rental, insur­ance and cus­to­dial fees which vary by the type of organization.

The revised agree­ment would exclude sports prac­tice ses­sions known as “open gyms” from hav­ing all the fees waived, since stu­dents from other local school dis­tricts often par­tic­i­pate. Oper­a­tions direc­tor Kevin Early explained that those events have to be excluded from the def­i­n­i­tion of school orga­ni­za­tion because the school’s facil­i­ties insur­ance only cov­ers acci­dents that hap­pen to Galion stu­dents or per­son­nel, not to other schools’ stu­dents. The school would retain the right to waive fees case by case, he said, which could be use for open gym nights if the board wanted.

The board tabled the revi­sions in order to see if there is another way to allow open gym nights with­out charg­ing the fees or hav­ing to waive them in each case.

The other four agree­ments passed with min­i­mal dis­cus­sion. The board approved an agree­ment with Oak­stone Land­scap­ing for $10,050 for the sea­son to remove snow on main dri­ves and park­ing lots at the mid­dle school, high school and admin­is­tra­tive cen­ter on the Galion cam­pus. The agree­ment will hold through April. Pre­vi­ously, school main­te­nance employ­ees had taken care of snow removal.

“This won’t com­pletely elim­i­nate over­time for our staff,” said Linda Kid­well, school trea­surer. School main­te­nance will still be respon­si­ble for putting down salt in any area and for plow­ing out all walk­ways, the ele­men­tary school park­ing lots and the access road from Carter Drive from where the high school park­ing lot adjoins up to the ele­men­tary buildings.

An agree­ment with the SPARC Coun­cil for a Col­lege Access Adviser at $1,000 for the year was approved. The adviser will work with stu­dents on course selec­tion and other col­lege prepa­ra­tions one day a week through the school year. The SPARC Coun­cil asked par­tic­i­pat­ing dis­tricts to con­tribute a min­i­mal amount toward the costs of the Col­lege Access pro­gram. SPARC stands for Suc­ceed and Pros­per through edu­ca­tion: Ashland-Richland-Crawford.

The board approved an amended agree­ment for 2011–2012 with the AVID (Advance­ment Via Indi­vid­ual Deter­mi­na­tion) Cen­ter for mem­ber­ship, cur­ricu­lum mate­ri­als and pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment ser­vices. The changes adjust when por­tions of the AVID pro­gram will be imple­mented. This school year (2011–2012) is a plan­ning year for imple­ment­ing the AVID pro­gram at the mid­dle school and high school. Imple­men­ta­tion will begin in 2012–2013. The total con­tract amount is $35,034 and will be paid from the AVID Inno­va­tion Grant and Race to the Top funds.

An agree­ment with Perry Cor­po­ra­tion was approved for cost-per-copy main­te­nance and sup­ply of the 14 Kon­ica copiers the dis­trict has. The agree­ments allows for 17,650,000 copies, about five years’ worth, at 1.031 cents per black-and-white image and 4.5 cents per color copy. Toner cost is included. The price per copy is locked for the term of the agree­ment and includes images scanned and sent to e-mail as well as those copied.

Perry Cor­po­ra­tion will make the remain­ing lease pay­ments on the copy machines and take care of costs related to get­ting the cur­rent copy machines back to the leas­ing com­pany at the end of the lease term, after wip­ing the machines’ hard dri­ves clean. Between this agree­ment and the removal of four fax phone lines, the dis­trict will save $24,000, accord­ing to Kidwell.

The Galion Board of Edu­ca­tion will hold its first reg­u­lar meet­ing of the year at 6:30 p.m. Thurs­day, Jan. 12, in the mid­dle school com­puter lab. The pub­lic is encour­aged to attend. The super­in­ten­dent will bring a draft of the goals that the board estab­lished at the orga­ni­za­tional meet­ing so the board can approve it.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Jan 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.