By GLEN WERLING
A lot has changed since November with the construction of the Norwell Middle School, members of the Northern Wells Community Schools Board learned Tuesday evening.
A PowerPoint presentation by Weigand Construction revealed that among the 16 highlights of construction completed since that November board meeting, are the exterior load bearing concrete masonry units on the west face of the south units, the media center and the south face of the east units, high roof steel around the media center and second floor in-wall rough-ins.
Also among the forthcoming construction project plans are roof and window blocking, first floor mechanical electrical, plumbing in-wall and overhead rough-ins throughout the building and the south unit stairs installation.
A guided tour by the eighth grade students is planned to take place soon. Construction is anticipated to be complete by 2024. At that point crews will turn their attention toward renovations in the existing school.
In other business, board members Angie Topp, Gene Donaghy, Chad Kline and Traci Neuenschwander:
• Approved terminating the employment of custodian Teresa Hyland.
• Accepted the resignations of Sally Fornwalt, food service employee, and Megan Morrow, high school assistant girls golf coach.
• Hired: Joyce Acavello on a contracted service as Ossian Elementary first grade teacher; Teresa Sell as Ossian Elementary School special education teacher for maternity leave; Andrew Layman as a middle school social studies teacher; Amanda Parkhill as an Ossian Elementary teaching assistant; Eli Johnson as a volunteer wrestling coach at the high school; and Lisa Williams as the Unified Track assistant coach.
• Accepted a donation of $1,000 from Park Community Church’s Food Fight program.
• Retired the 88 remaining Neola Inc. policies. The school board agreed last year to switch from Neola to the Indiana School Board Association to supply the school board policies.
• Approved policies: 1104, New Board Member Orientation; 1205, Public Expressions of Board Members; 1306, Board Minutes;1502, Travel Expenses for Board Members; 2100 Line of Authority; 3130, Employee Travel and Expenses; and 3700, Reduction in Force.
• Revived and renamed the corporation policy dealing with the use of corporation-owned equipment by the general public.
• Renamed board policy category 8000 from “Operations” to “Community School Relations.” The decision to rename the policy was because “Operations” was a category under Neola, but the ISBA calls the same policies by a different name — “Community School Relations.”
• Reviewed the progress and decisions of the public Strategic Planning Committee so far. The committee has been focusing on vertically progressive curriculum and programming, high ability programming, special education programming, establishing consistent K-12 data analysis and program evaluation, dual credit courses and career and technical education courses. Administrators shared with attendees of the strategic planning committee — the meeting for which followed the regular school board meeting — the progress on addressing the concerns identified by the committee.
Tuesday’s committee (38 people from the public were in attendance) was divided between three groups — one addressing curriculum and education resources including curricular materials selection and library books reconsideration, the second discussing high ability programming priorities and finalizing the spring 2023 identification criteria revisions and the third discussing goals Northern Wells special education programming.
glenw@news-banner.com
