Galion BOE discusses new visitor bleachers

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

At the Aug. 23 Galion Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing, board mem­bers first went into exec­u­tive ses­sion for 35 min­utes. When they returned and resumed the reg­u­lar meet­ing, Dr. Kathy Jen­ney, super­in­ten­dent of the dis­trict, rec­om­mended the rein­state­ment of Sean Maguire as mid­dle school health teacher under the pro­vi­sions of the reduc­tion in force procedure.

The board approved it, as well as an adjust­ment to the employ­ment con­tract dates for Joe Tucker (grounds super­vi­sor), Cheryl Jason (stu­dent sup­port ser­vices spe­cial­ist for the inter­me­di­ate school) and Ed Rich (mid­dle school prin­ci­pal). Jen­ney explained the adjust­ment cor­rected the dates for the employ­ment peri­ods of those individuals.

The fol­low­ing were approved for extra-duty assign­ments for the 2012–13 school year: Krista McK­ibben and Jamie Tate, cheer­lead­ing coaches; Michelle Har­mon and Heather Dyer, vol­un­teer cheer­lead­ing coaches; Eliz­a­beth Wei­th­man, fresh­man vol­ley­ball coach; Katie Holt, 7th grade vol­ley­ball coach; and Rob New­come, vol­un­teer foot­ball coach.

Sev­eral trans­porta­tion agree­ments with other school dis­tricts were approved. With Colonel Craw­ford, to pro­vide stu­dent trans­porta­tion to the Tomor­row Cen­ter in Mt. Gilead (cost not to exceed $9,000). With Mt. Gilead Exempted Vil­lage School Dis­trict, to the Ohio School for the Deaf and the Ohio School for the blind (cost not to exceed $10,000). With River Val­ley, for hand­i­capped and non-handicapped stu­dents attend­ing the North Cen­tral Ohio Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Center.

Jen­ney explained that these coop­er­a­tive agree­ments keep costs down for all school dis­tricts involved.

A one-year Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing Agree­ment with the Galion Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion was approved. There will be no increase in employee base salary, but a 10 per­cent con­tri­bu­tion from salaries will be made to health, den­tal and vision insur­ance. Board Pres­i­dent Den­nis Long and Board mem­ber Bob Zeisler both thanked the GEA for its contribution.

In past meet­ings the poten­tial project for replac­ing the vis­i­tor side bleach­ers was dis­cussed and bids were opened on Aug. 17. That evening, the board approved con­struc­tion for the project, which has been divided in two.

The first part is labeled as site prepa­ra­tion, in which the exist­ing bleach­ers will be demol­ished and the con­crete base for the new bleach­ers will be installed. (The vis­i­tor side press box is free stand­ing. As of now, the plan is to keep it there.) The win­ning bid went to Wei­th­man Con­struc­tion at a total cost of $19,875.

Far­nam Equip­ment will be per­form­ing the sec­ond part of the project, which is the instal­la­tion of the new bleach­ers. The total cost for instal­la­tion is $36,900. Jen­ney pre­sented sketches of what the new set will look like. It is made of alu­minum and will have a seat­ing capac­ity of 784 plus eight wheel­chair spaces.

The esti­mated com­ple­tion date is Sept. 24. “We will try not to inter­rupt foot­ball sea­son. Hope­fully work can be done on the weeks of away games,” Jen­ney emphasized.

The Galion Board of Education’s next reg­u­lar meet­ing will be Sept. 13 at 6:30 p.m., in the com­puter lab of the mid­dle school.