By GLEN WERLING
A precision machining course will be coming to Norwell High School.
At Tuesday night’s meeting of the Northern Wells Community School Board, the board members gave Superintendent Mike Springer the green light to begin planning for the class.
Precision machining introduces students to using machine tools such as lathes, mills and computer numerical control machines to shape raw materials into precision parts. There is a high demand in today’s workforce for people with those skills and it is why local business leaders and Wells County Economic Development worked with former Norwell Principal David Parker in getting a class started at Norwell.
When Parker left Norwell to take a position in the central office at Blackford, the plans for the course were sort of put on hold, but certainly not forgotten, board member and Wells County Economic Development Executive Director Chad Kline observed. Now they’re full speed ahead.
Currently, through the Area 18 Education Cooperative, the precision machining course is offered at South Adams High School.
Geography may be the reason why only 13 students from Norwell have participated in the classes at South Adams in the past 25 years. One is participating this year.
Parker took a survey of students in August to gauge the interest by students if the class was offered at Norwell. Twenty-two said they would be highly interested and more than 70 expressed moderate interest.
Kline said that the aim is to also get the students from surrounding Area 18 schools to participate in the class at Norwell as well and to have two precision machining classes offered through Area 18 — the one at South Adams and one at Norwell.
The plans are to have the course ready for student participation by the fall of the 2022-23 school year.
The board members also approved a request from Ossian Elementary School to launch a developmental preschool program at Ossian.
Currently Lancaster Central Elementary houses the developmental preschool for Northern Wells. However there are no openings currently in the Lancaster program and there is even a waiting list for children to get in, said Lancaster Principal Ginger Butcher.
Butcher explained that the advantages of having a developmental preschool at Ossian would be:
• Ossian area students can start education at their home school.
• It will open more seats to allow both schools to serve more students with special education or individual education plans. The Lancaster school is full and currently has a waiting list.
• It will increase the visibility by the public of the availability of a developmental preschool at Ossian.
Principal Andrea Larkey said the school has room to house the program.
“I believe that if it were there and people are aware of it, it will fill up,” Springer said.
Larkey added that she is seeing more and more kindergarten students who are non-communicative. Having a developmental preschool to address those learning issues early would give children the building block skills they need to succeed not only at the kindergarten level but beyond, she added.
The board members also learned from Springer that since the September 2021 count date for average daily membership, Northern Wells has lost 40.5 students.
Eleven of those students graduated from Norwell High School in December, three dropped out of high school, 18 students returned to home schooling, 22 moved out of the district, six students are continuing to live in the district but have transferred to other schools, and 4.5 students were students lost due to Department of Child Services or other placements out of district.
“It’s not great news, and it’s not trending in the direction we want,” Springer said. “We need to be more intentional about how we do grow enrollment.”
Norwell High School lost the most students — 34, followed by 14.5 at Lancaster, and one at the middle school.
On the positive side, Ossian Elementary gained nine students.
The breakdown in enrollment at the elementary schools is as follows:
• At Ossian, 99 students are in kindergarten, 87 in first grade, 97 in second grade, 97 in third grade, 83 in fourth grade and 80 in fifth grade.
At Lancaster, 72 students are in kindergarten, 93 in first grade, 76 in second, 91 in third, 89 in fourth, and 93 in fifth.
There are 758 students at Norwell High School and 581 in at the middle school.
Comparing the numbers with last year, Springer observed that the change in the district from the ADM count in September and the ADM count in March was only the loss of one student.
Springer added that some of the home schooling students who transferred to Northern Wells and then transferred back to home schooling failed to meet the academic requirements of the school corporation.
He assured the board members that the administration is looking into reasons for the decline and trying to find ways to address those reasons.
glenw@news-banner.com
