Area 18 gets guidance on agreement

BERNE — Area 18 finally has some direction on how to change its agreement.

Superintendent Scott Litwiller on Tuesday updated South Adams School Board on the process that has been in limbo since June.

Board members met after spending the day visiting classes and touring school facilities.

Litwiller explained that Area 18, a cooperative between Jay, South Adams, Blackford, Southern Wells, Adams Central, Bluffton-Harrison, North Adams (Bellmont), Northern Wells (Norwell) and Huntington schools to provide a variety of career and technical education programs, has been advised by the Indiana State Board of Education that amending a local agreement requires a unanimous vote of the school corporations involved. In order to change an agreement without a unanimous vote, the current agreement would need to be canceled (doing so does not require a unanimous vote) and a new agreement submitted for approval.

The issue came up last summer after Southern Wells announced plans to send regular buses into adjacent districts, including Jay County, in order to pick up students. Southern Wells had been attracting students from other districts for years, especially in the Montpelier area of Blackford County and the Warren area of Huntington County, but had previously not sent buses across district lines.

In response, some members of Area 18 pushed for an amended agreement that stated “participating school corporations agree, as a condition of participation, not to provide any school transportation services within other participating school corporations’ boundaries …” except for shared services (career and technical education programs), field trips and extra-curricular events.

Jay School Board quickly voted in favor of that change, as did several others, while South Adams decided to wait for an opinion from the Indiana State Department of Education. It took until early this year for South Adams to receive word that DOE has no role in overseeing local agreements before turning to the state board for its guidance.

Litwiller said the Area 18 Board, which is made up of superintendents of the participating school corporations, plans to discuss the issue again at its meeting today.

Also Tuesday, board members Arlene Amstutz, John Mann, Julie Mansfield, Landon Patterson, Amy Orr and John Buckingham, absent Mitch Sprunger, approved South Adams’ summer school programs and classes.

Summer school offerings will include IREAD summer sessions for third graders, Jump Start Remediation for first through ninth graders and Wilson Reading for third through ninth graders. High school options will include credit recovery, credit advancement, summer band and supervised ag experience.

There will also be a new introduction to precision machining course for middle schoolers and high school underclassmen.

The Region 6 Migrant Education Resource Center is working to hire six summor tutors to work with migrant students from early June through the end of July.

In other business, the board:

•Honored teacher Jarod Dailey and the school’s precision machining program as an example of excellence for being recognized as a program of excellence by the Indiana Association of Career and Technical Districts.

•Approved the following: renewal of a one-year lease agreement with Head Start for one elementary school classroom at a monthly fee of $600; a one-year leave of absence for Lana Shoaf; a series of policy revisions on first reading regarding curriculum, graduation requirements, student fees and and other topics in order to bring them in line with state requirements; pay for for director of buildings and maintenance Dave Vorhees at double his regular hourly rate for time worked on March 30 (Good Friday), which is a paid holiday for South Adams staff.

•Learned from Vorhees that a recent change to LED lights will result in $8,654 in annual savings and result in a $5,283 rebate from American Electric Power.

•Heard a presentation from Trisha Moser about The Hope Clinic, which works with South Adams health classes on “sexual risk avoidance education.”

•Accepted the retirement of bus driver Kathy Vance and the resignation of elementary school teacher Betsy Minnich.

•Reaffirmed the use of the rainy day fund to purchase about 2 acres of land from Timothy and Michele LeFever at the southwest side of the school property. The cost will be $23,000.

•Held a moment of silence for Tammy Balsiger, an elementary school Title I aide who died Sunday.