Tom Knasel of the Brownsville School Foundation, accompanied by Dr. Patrick Haskel, addressed the board about the progress of the Brownsville School Playground Project. He said their mission was to form a charitable orginization and build an all-inclusive playground for children with disabilities at the school. Work began in the summer of 2018 with a lot of great help from the community. With grant money and donations, they have been able to complete about 90% of the work for Phase One of the project. The other 10% of work remaining concerns covering of the play surface, concrete work and additional small repairs. Knasel said they have raised $57,760 since 2018, which accounts for 72% of their goal. There will be a second phase to the project one this phase has been completed.
Total revenue for the district in January was $1,224,117, which includes $55,318 from the one percent sales tax.
In the superintendent’s report, Brad Lee congratulated the High School ACES Team on their second placed finish in regional competition at SIC. They will advance to the sectionals at SIU-Carbondale on March 11th.
So far the district has used only one emergency day this school year. If no more are utilized, the last day of student attendance would be Friday, May 15th and the last day for staff would be Monday, May 18th.
A representative from Stand Up for Children Illinois videoed some of the staff that has been hired since Evidence Based Funding started, on a recommendation from the IASA, because of the financial hardships the district has endured, and how EBF has contributed to the turnaround. Dr. Amy DIxon and Jerrod Newell were also interviewed The goal of Stand for Children Illinois is to encourage legislators to continue investing in the EBF formula and hope it will impact the decision to continue increase state funding of public schools.
In other business, Senior Olivia Gwaltney was inadvertently left off the list of board scholars for the first semester of the 2019-20 school year, Senior Olivia Gwaltney was inadvertently left off the list, so she was put on the list here.
The 2020-21 school calendar was approved.
34 board policies were given final approval as amended.
The board accepted the resignations of Laura Saunders as 7th grade english language arts teacher at the Junior High School and Anna York as 5th grade teacher as Washington School, both at the end of this school year; Rita Thomas as special education classroom teacher at Brownsville School effective January7th; Janet Childers as a noon supervisor and crossing guard at Lincoln School effective February 5th; Trey Mason as Junior High School girl’s track coach effective immediately; and Matthew Sneed as special education individual aid at the junior high school effective February 14th.
And accepted $2,923 in donations to the Brownsville School.
The board went into closed session at 7:20 PM.
During the closed session, the board voted to employ Amanda Buttry as Building Secretary at Lincoln Attendance Center for the 2019-2020 school year to fill the vacancy created by the reassignment of Joy McCully.
The board voted to employ Bailey Winters as the High School Assistant Softball Coach for the 2019-2020 school year to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Beth Hart.
The board voted to approve Cammie Pollard, Abbey Vaughn and Ariana Watts, Junior High School Volleyball Volunteer Assistant Coaches, John Choate as High School Baseball Volunteer Assistant Coach, and Thys Bax as High School Girls’ and Boys’ Volunteer Assistant Coach for the 2019-2020 school year.
