Vallinda and Mike Rowe of Illinoiscarry addressed the Board concerning school safety and protection, discussing a resolution supporting possible legislation allowing local school boards the option of developing student safety and protection plans. The resolution would give local school districts the option of developing plans for administrators, faculty and other staff to take part, which would include completing a training course and be qualified to have a concealed carry license upon being granted board approval. This would help provide aid to possible victims in case of an incident, before law enforcement arrives on the scene. And it would be in addition to the current emergency and crisis response plans that are currently being followed. The resolution would be sent to the Illinois Association of School Boards. The Board will look over the resolution and possibly discuss it at the next meeting.
The Board agreed to allow Lunsford Architects to seek bids for repairing the Washington school shingled roof, the Jefferson school roof replacement and repairs and the high school track resurfacing. This is in response to the ten year health life safety survey that was taken last year. Bids have already been accepted for the Lincoln school roof and work is to begin as soon as school is out.
A resolution was approved to convey the property the district currently owns adjacent to the city park in Crossville to the Village. This would square off what the Village owns next to the recently sold Crossville Attendance Center.
The district received state aid in January totaling $398,211 plus $49.769 in other revenue. They are still owed about $515,000 from the state.
In the Superintendent’s report, Brad Lee reminded that the Winter Sports Banquet for high school athletics will be held on Tuesday, March 7th at 6 p.m. at First Christian Church in Carmi.
Lee congratulated the Carmi-White County High School WYSE team for finishing in second place at the regional level on February 2nd at SIC.
There will be a half day teacher’s in-service this Friday, rescheduled from January 13th, which was cancelled due to the weather.
Ricky Sauls, Illinois State Coordinator for Scholastic 3-d archery presented information about an archery program for students in Unit #5. There are a total of eleven archery clubs in Illinois, including Edwards County. The program educates and guides kids in archery and scholarship monies are given out. The school district would only have to provide a place to practice, which would be covered by insurance, and would have to pay a $50 per year membership fee. To join, students would have to pay a $15 per year membership fee. The district will send out a survey to parents to see if there would be enough interest to start an archery program. If so, it would begin at the start of the next school year.
In other business, 2016-17 open house, in-service and parent/teacher conference dates, and junior high completion ceremony and high school graduation and baccalaureate dates were approved as were final revisions of 15 board policies.
Accepted were the resignations of Robin Mick as a fourth grade teacher at Washington school and Ashley Rhodes as special education individual aide at Brownsville school, both effective at the end of this school year and Gloria Kay Pretzsch as a breakfast/noon supervisor at Lincoln school effective this past February 15th.
They also approved a family and medical leave act request from Melanie Yearby beginning approximately on April 6th. She plans to return to work at the beginning of the next school year.
And they accepted $1,500 in donations to Brownsville school.
The board went into closed session at 7:54 p.m.
In the closed session, the Board employed John Choate as a high school assistant baseball coach, and approved Kyle Hon as a high school volunteer baseball coach. Thys Bax and Marcus Lynn were approved as volunteer high school track coaches. The Board also approved a one percent increase of the salary of Amy Atteberry, Dr. Amy Dixon, Bart King, and Jarrod Newell.
