New state education requirements discussed at Galion BOE

Matt Echel­berry

Inquirer Reporter

At the Galion Board of Education’s meet­ing on Aug. 9, employ­ment and new state edu­ca­tion require­ments were on the agenda.

Dr. San­dra Pow­ell, direc­tor of cur­ricu­lum, explained the Third Grade Read­ing Guar­an­tee that the dis­trict is ini­ti­at­ing as a result of Sen­ate Bill 316. The bill requires that stu­dents in grades kinder­garten through third receive a diag­nos­tic assess­ment of their read­ing skills each year.

Par­ents of stu­dents who are not on track with state stan­dards will be noti­fied and the school must enact an inter­ven­tion plan in order to improve the stu­dents’ read­ing abil­ity. At the end of third grade, stu­dents who still do not meet the appro­pri­ate read­ing level are required by the state to be retained.

How­ever, Pow­ell empha­sized that retain­ment WILL NOT hap­pen at the end of the 2012–13 school year. Because this is a new require­ment, the dis­trict must only per­form the diag­nos­tic assess­ments for the first year in order to estab­lish data and cre­ate pol­icy on how to help stu­dents who fall behind. No third graders will be retained (when nec­es­sary) until the 2013–14 school year.

Pow­ell also explained the Ele­men­tary Span­ish Enrich­ment Pro­gram for fourth and fifth graders that will be offered begin­ning in the fall. Car­olina Mar­tinez Karam will be teach­ing stu­dents basic Span­ish vocab­u­lary, as well as His­panic food and culture.

In the Superintendent’s updates, Kathy Jen­ney said that the dis­trict has adver­tised for bids to replace the vis­i­tor side bleach­ers at the Heise Park foot­ball sta­dium. The project will have two phases: 1) the con­crete work, which she said will most likely be done by a local con­trac­tor, and 2) the bleacher instal­la­tion. Jen­ney hopes to have a rec­om­men­da­tion for the board on who to hire for the project at the Aug. 23 meeting.

Sev­eral employ­ees were hired or rehired that evening (see box for details). The board also accepted the res­ig­na­tion of Nate Hen­der­son as head JV boys bas­ket­ball coach.

Two pol­icy revi­sions were also approved. One involved stu­dent trans­porta­tion, detail­ing the pro­ce­dure par­ents must fol­low if stu­dents are to be picked up/dropped off at a child care provider. The other required dis­trict admin­is­tra­tors to make a ten per­cent con­tri­bu­tion from their salaries toward pay­ing health insur­ance premiums.

At the board’s last meet­ing, it was approached by a mem­ber of the Galion Boost­ers Club to allow Pizza Hut to offer con­ces­sions at the 2012 Cross Coun­try Fes­ti­val. A con­tract has since been drawn up, which the board read and approved: “That this Board hereby autho­rizes the Galion Boost­ers Club to enter into a con­ces­sions agree­ment with North­ern Ohio Pizza Com­pany to pro­vide a con­ces­sion trailer and ser­vices for the annual cross coun­try fes­ti­val at Amann Reser­voir on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2012, sub­ject to the fol­low­ing conditions:

1. That the con­ces­sion trailer and facil­i­ties are inspected and approved by the Mor­row County Health Department.

2. That this Board of Edu­ca­tion be listed as a named addi­tional insured on North­ern Ohio Pizza’s lia­bil­ity insur­ance policy.”

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The fol­low­ing employ­ees were approved pend­ing crim­i­nal back­ground checks:
Jeri S. Wires, assis­tant trea­surer from Sept. 4-Sept. 28, and Cheryl Jason, stu­dent sup­port ser­vices spe­cial­ist at the inter­me­di­ate school.
The fol­low­ing retired per­son­nel were rehired: Lawrence Daw­son, II; Micheal Hartz; Rex Payne, Jr.; Julie Polak; Shari Roelle; James Ruth, Jr.; P. Michael Schaffner; Cheryl Wash­ing­ton; and Bar­bara West.
The fol­low­ing were approved as coaches: Kyle Baughn and Todd Eagle, fresh­man foot­ball; Kyle Par­sons and Matt Valen­tine, 7th grade foot­ball; Den­nis Lybarger and Brian Owens, vol­un­teer foot­ball coaches; Leah Zeisler, JV vol­ley­ball; Karri Shearer, 8th grade vol­ley­ball; and Fred Rine­hart, assis­tant march­ing band director.

Posted by Rachel Mendell on Aug 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.