CWC School Board Talks Budget and Incident Involving Illinois State Board of Education

A marathon session of the Carmi White County School Board was held Monday night.  Instead of the highlight being the passing of the Fiscal Year 2025 budget, it became about an incident involving a child being punished by being given a “time-out” in a closet.  Scott Mareing was there and has this report…

David Lovell and his wife Minerva were present at the meeting and David spoke to the board during public communications about the incident involving their son

                “I’m just curious, is the board more concerned with its status or the children that go there, because the training they did obviously wasn’t right. RTO I asked ya’ll to file, was not filed by ya’ll. You picked up a little boy and locked him in a closet and shut the door on him, plain and simple. When we were at the other schools, I don’t know what the difference was, we worked with them, we had problems with my son, we got around them, never had this problem and all of a sudden we go to a new school and we have this problem. Its been an all year problem. From comments to We don’t want to take your son somewhere because we don’t want to be responsible for him, we are going to exclude him from everything. I think ya’ll had a teacher slap a student last year, and I think she still works there.”

A complaint was filed with the Illinois State Board of Education back in September after an incident occurred at the Washington Attendance Center where a child was restrained and taken to a separate room. The parents of that child issued the complaint and had previously requested a meeting to discuss the situation. The entire incident was witnessed by multiple people and recorded on a body cam by a School Resource Officer. Washington Attendance Center was found guilty for failing to report the incident.

Minerva Lovell had asked the board about a home bounding program, which is an option for a student who cannot attend school for four or more weeks throughout the school year due to a medical condition. School Board President Nathan Whetstone said they would look into that option.

One of the items during the closed session, which lasted two hours and eight minutes, was Mr. Lovell’s possible denial of admission to school events or property.  The board voted to deny his admission for one calendar year with him to receive a written decision on the details shortly.

The meeting began with an amended budget hearing to go over the numbers with no questions asked by the board members, so the hearing ended after just four minutes.

The regular meeting then got underway.

The budget was approved.  It will be $650,448 in the black compared to the last fiscal year, with total receipts for all funds projected at $21,773,499 and expenditures of $21,123,051.

The board accepted the district commercial and worker’s compensation insurance renewal recommendation of Bushue Human Resources, for a one-year renewal of last year’s coverage with Wright Specialty Insurance, CFC, Gerber Life, and AIG.

Permission was granted to accept local and/or public bids for summer maintenance projects at Lincoln School totaling $135,186 and $242,100 at Washington School.

In the Superintendent’s report, Jarrod Newell said building administrators and central office staff are busy ordering and receiving supplies, materials, and equipment for the upcoming school year.  Equipment is being updated by the technology staff.  Cleaning and repairs are being made to the various buildings.

Chief Jason Carter of the Carmi Police Department gave an update on the School Resource Officer program

                “We were able to get the second School Resource Officer up and going in the school full-time, about the last week in January/first week of February. So we had a few months with both School Resource Officers full-time in all the schools. All the feedback that I got was very positive.”

The Consent Agenda was approved, which included recognizing Board Scholars for the second semester, $5,100 in donations, and approval of the Consolidated District Plan.

The board went into a closed session at 7:39 PM.  When they came back in over two hours later at 9:47 PM, in addition to the decision on David Lovell, they approved that written closed session minutes dated December 18, 2023 date of last review through May 20, 2024, remain closed; audio tapes for regular and closed session board meeting s from July 18, 2022, through December 19, 2022, be destroyed by the local records act; accepted retirements, hires, and resignations as listed in Appendix A; and extend the Superintendent’s contract for five years from July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2029.