Year extended to June 9

Jay County students will be in the classroom through June 9 as a result of days lost to snow and bad weather.
At least, that’s the plan for now.
“We continue to miss days, and we’re not done,” superintendent Tim Long told Jay School Board Tuesday. “We’re in discussions on how to make up the days.”
One option, which Jay Classroom Teachers Association representative David Golden told the board has the approval of teachers, is to extend the school day by one hour to make up the lost classroom time.
“The more instructional time we can give our students, the better off we are,” said Golden.
Jay Schools parent Penny Ball sees it differently.
“My suggestion is taking spring break away,” she told the board. “I realize people have already made plans for spring break, but kids need to be prepared” for upcoming ISTEP exams.
Long said for now the plan is to tack on the lost days at the end of the original school calendar.
“The weather’s been tough on all of us,” he said. “We’re not ready for a recommendation on that now.”
Long has polled school employees, but no clear consensus has surfaced.
Tuesday’s meeting had been scheduled as a two-hour work session on school finances, but when Monday’s meeting was canceled because Long was ill, the agenda was amended. The first hour was spent on what had been Monday’s agenda, and then after a break the board held its work session.
The board recognized Jay County High School faculty members Katie Clark, Matt Slavik and Whitney Freeman for their efforts in establishing an innovative professional development program that could save the school corporation a significant amount of money over time.
“I’ve never seen anything quite so innovative and approachable,” said Jeremy Gulley, who chairs the Jay Schools technology committee.
Clark, Slavik and Freeman have been participants in a pilot program that includes additional electronic devices in the classroom and creative use of the My Big Campus networking system.
The system they have devised allows teachers who have effectively mastered the new technology to serve as mentors for other teachers via My Big Campus. Six standards and five phases of development are spelled out.
Teachers earn professional development growth points not when they complete the program, but when their students demonstrate that they’ve mastered the skills.
“This is not entirely theoretical. This is happening,” said Gulley. “It’s what the students do based upon what the teacher did.”
Ordinarily, professional development sessions for teachers would involve bringing in outside speakers or trainers. Growth points would be awarded for completing the training sessions.
In other business, the board:
•Approved field trips for sixth grade students, German students, a graphic imaging class, JCHS cheerleaders, English students and the robotics team. But board member Beth Krieg raised questions about consistency in the funding of such trips, noting that in some cases the students pay their way, in other cases fund-raising events are conducted and in still others — particularly the robotics program — the school corporation picks up the lion’s share of the tab.
“I think there needs to be something consistent,” she said. “It’s something for the future we need to look at.”
•Agreed to participate again this year in the federal summer lunch program. Initiated in 2010, the program served more than 5,000 lunches its first year. In 2013, it served 10,665 lunches and 2,565 student snacks.
Approval of the program came on a 6-1 vote with board member Greg Wellman dissenting.
“It won’t be a surprise that I vote no,” said Wellman. “I think it’s a bad precedent to have the government feed kids. … I just don’t like the government being God.”
Others were strongly supportive.
“It’s been a wonderful program,” said board member Mike Shannon. “It’s really turned around attitudes.”
The program runs from June 9 to July 25 and has sites open to the public at Pennville, Westlawn, Judge Haynes, Redkey and General Shanks elementary schools. It also provides lunches for the JCHS Marching Patriots summer program, the summer reading program at Jay County Public Library and the summer program at the Jay Community Center.
•Accepted a federal grant of $68,146 for rural and low income schools.
•Accepted the signed school improvement plans for all of the schools in the corporation.
•Approved the termination of Susan Brown as an instructional assistant at Westlawn and Teffney Lowe as a custodian at JCHS.
•Approved leaves of absences for fifth grade teacher Holly Brunswick and food service employee Linda Castle.
•Accepted the resignation of food service manager Nicole Chapman.
•Accepted the retirement resignation of JCHS physics teacher Mindy Weaver, effective at the end of the school year.
•Approved extracurricular assignments for Amy Grady working with the band guard, Tonya McCoy as assistant gymnastics coach at JCHS and Lora Schlosser as JCHS gymnastics coach.
•Accepted the extracurricular resignation of Abby Champ as girls soccer coach at JCHS.
•Hired Ashley Bonifas as a part-time cook at JCHS.
•Approved a bus request by Jay County Girl Scouts.[[In-content Ad]]