May 13, 2008

Bluffton-Harrison student athletes posting good academic averages

Student athletes in the Bluffton-Harrison school district are also good academic students, members of the board of trustees learned at their regular meeting Monday night.

Steve Thompson, athletic director at Bluffton Middle School and Bluffton High School during his annual report noted that the grade point average of student athletes is nearly 3.2 on a 4.0 grade scale.

Also noted in the report was that student participation in athletic activities at the middle school is at a higher percentage than at the high school.

Thompson pointed to the Tiger Scholars Awards program, which rewards students who maintain a GPA of 3.4 or higher while playing on a sports team.

Thompson saw these awards as a way to reward students who had successfully balanced sports, school and work. He was happy to announce that 133 such awards were handed out this school year.

Thompson’s report also discussed student participation in sports, why good coaches are needed for each sport, the and how well the schools’ teams had performed this past school year.

Board members Daryl Elliott, Kent Shady, Dawn Frauhiger, Steve Huffman, and Brent Hiday were all present.

Thompson noted that while sixth graders did not have many options for sports, 65 percent of seventh and eighth graders played sports. What’s more, the schedule was set up so that a student could play up to four sports a year. Thompson said he did this to encourage students to “just try it out.”

The numbers drop in high school, with 48 percent of students participating in sports.

“We want to find ways to get more kids to play,” said Thompson. As the athletic director, he believes sports will benefit the students, even if few of them will play beyond the high school level.

He added that he wanted kids to have good memories associated with playing sports so that “30 years from now” they will look back on those experiences as good times.

Thompson said that athletics were also beneficial because they encouraged students to get outside their boxes and get involved in their communities. Several teams did things like help senior citizens at a nursing home. One team also held a car wash recently, something Thompson does not normally allow, but all the proceeds went to charity.

A key part of getting more students to participate was providing good coaches, according to Thompson.

“We have some big holes to fill,” he said.

A large number of the 68 coaches at the middle school and high school are lay coaches, meaning they are not also teachers at the schools. Thompson said some students would be more interested in playing sports if they saw the coaches during the day and built relationships with them.

He then reminded the board of the many accomplishments the schools’ teams had made this year, such as the boys’ basketball team posting an undefeated season and winning conference championships.

He concluded by saying, “It was a pleasure to be part of how fast and furious it (the athletic department) was this year.”

Jon Bennett, principal of the middle school, gave a brief update on efforts to improve ISTEP scores.

He reminded the board that the student subgroups from their schools who struggled the most on the ISTEP were special education students and free and reduced lunch students.

Bennett said the goal was to increase the number of passing students from those groups by 10 percent next year. He said this would be done by communicating with parents now and during the summer.

Bennett will also compile materials, resources and support on the subjects these students had the most trouble with on the ISTEP based on data from the Indiana Department of Education.

He said two employees from each of the three school buildings went to Fort Wayne May 5 to partake in a workshop on the updates to the ISTEP test at the Grand Wayne Center.

Dawn Frauhiger asked if students would be selected beforehand to participate in the Wilson Reading Program.

Bennett said they would be selected beforehand based on the STAR reading test, which they recently took, as well as teacher recommendations and NWEA test results.

In other business:

–The board unanimously approved the letter of resignation from Quinn Grubisich, an English language arts and German teacher at the high school.

–The Policy JH: Student Welfare was unanimously approved on second reading.

–Stephanie Hiday, president of the PTO, presented additional work on phase II of the outdoor science lab and gardens to be built at the elementary school. PTO will fund the project. Many materials and labor will be donated by local various businesses. PTO has $8,000 for this project, and $6,000 is expected to be used. She will hear from General Mills on May 15 as to whether the project will receive the “My Hometown Helper” grant. Hiday hopes that construction will begin in June and be completed by the beginning of the next school year.

–The additional appropriation hearing was delayed until the next meeting.

–The corporate resolution that would enter the middle school’s HVAC into the energy savings program was unanimously approved by the board.

–Superintendent Dr. Julie Wood reported the three days selected for joint meetings with Adams County schools in the 2008-2009 school year would be Oct. 6, Nov. 26 and April 13. The October meeting would focus on response to intervention (RTI); the November meeting will be for Ruby Payne Intervention, which is a program on strategies for working with students in poverty; and the April meeting, called “Best of the Best,” will have teachers who have been successful in the classroom share what they are doing.

Dr. Wood added that the last two dates were selected because they were close to major holidays (Thanksgiving and Good Friday,) and would allow students to spend more time with their families.

The next meeting of the Bluffton-Harrison School Board will be Tuesday, May 27, at 7 p.m. Topics will include the elementary and middle school handbooks and the additional approbation hearing.

nathan@news-banner.com