October 22, 2019 at 4:04 p.m.
Board review schedule options
Board review schedule options
What will the school day look like to students next year when Jay County’s middle schools are consolidated into a combined junior-senior high school?
Answering that question has been the focus of a curriculum committee involving teachers, counselors and administrators.
And Jay School Board members learned Monday what a couple of the options are.
“We knew (during earlier discussions of consolidation) that the block schedule was unaffordable,” said superintendent Jeremy Gulley. “The question is what do we move to.”
Currently Jay County High School operates under a block schedule with five periods a day. Classes are longer than a traditional seven-period school day, and courses have a shorter timeframe. The system affords lots of flexibility for taking electives, re-taking courses, remediation and teacher prep time.
But it also requires more teaching staff than a traditional seven-period day, and in an era of cost-cutting the board decided earlier this year that block scheduling would end with the current school year.
JCHS principal Chad Dodd outlined two options the curriculum committee has been studying.
One is the traditional seven-period day. The other is known as “rotating eight, drop two.”
“Both options are going to reduce staff,” said Gulley.
Dodd explained that the committee wanted to maintain the current CTE (career technical education) pathways, credit recovery, early college courses and remediation. It also had to deal with the latest round of changes in graduation requirements coming down from the Indiana Department of Education.
“We want to make sure we create as many opportunities for our kids (as possible),” said Dodd. “Both of these schedules work for the diploma options we have.”
The seven-period day schedule would be familiar to anyone who attended high school before the adoption of block scheduling.
Students would take seven classes and a 25 minute home room and have a 30 minute lunch. They’d see the same teachers at the same time each day.
Answering that question has been the focus of a curriculum committee involving teachers, counselors and administrators.
And Jay School Board members learned Monday what a couple of the options are.
“We knew (during earlier discussions of consolidation) that the block schedule was unaffordable,” said superintendent Jeremy Gulley. “The question is what do we move to.”
Currently Jay County High School operates under a block schedule with five periods a day. Classes are longer than a traditional seven-period school day, and courses have a shorter timeframe. The system affords lots of flexibility for taking electives, re-taking courses, remediation and teacher prep time.
But it also requires more teaching staff than a traditional seven-period day, and in an era of cost-cutting the board decided earlier this year that block scheduling would end with the current school year.
JCHS principal Chad Dodd outlined two options the curriculum committee has been studying.
One is the traditional seven-period day. The other is known as “rotating eight, drop two.”
“Both options are going to reduce staff,” said Gulley.
Dodd explained that the committee wanted to maintain the current CTE (career technical education) pathways, credit recovery, early college courses and remediation. It also had to deal with the latest round of changes in graduation requirements coming down from the Indiana Department of Education.
“We want to make sure we create as many opportunities for our kids (as possible),” said Dodd. “Both of these schedules work for the diploma options we have.”
The seven-period day schedule would be familiar to anyone who attended high school before the adoption of block scheduling.
Students would take seven classes and a 25 minute home room and have a 30 minute lunch. They’d see the same teachers at the same time each day.
Under “rotating eight, drop two,” students would take eight classes. But they’d only attend all eight on Mondays.
On subsequent days, one of their classes would be dropped in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Each class would be attended four days each week instead of five. Classes would be 55 to 57 minutes long.
That system, said Dodd, would allow for more opportunities for electives. The seven-period day would involve a bit more classroom time, but the revolving schedule would allow students to take more courses.
Both systems would reduce teacher preparation time.
“We are going to spend more time directly in front of students, teaching,” said Dodd.
He added, “The challenge for the ‘drop two’ is that it’s different.”
“This clearly has some complexity to it,” said Gulley. “To my mind it comes down to the opportunities weighed against the complexity.”
The curriculum committee will now be surveying teachers who would be working with a schedule change to measure their opinions.
Action on any change is expected at the school board’s next meeting.
In other business, the board:
•Formally adopted the Jay Schools budget of $39,002,170 for 2020. Of that amount, $13,816,380 will come from local property taxes. The balance will come from the state basic grant for education. Adoption was on a 6-0 vote with board member Ron Laux absent.
•Approved on a 6-0 vote a teacher contract agreement that had previously been ratified by the Jay Classroom Teachers Association and had been reviewed by the board at a special meeting Thursday. The contract calls for a 3.5% raise in the base rate of pay, revision of language related to the sick pay bank and raises for extracurricular assignments related to consolidation.
•Heard business manager Tarinna Morris report that she projects a cash balance in the education fund of $2,206,155 at the end of the calendar year. She noted that payroll expenses so far this school year are down $85,793.26 because of cost-cutting efforts.
•Authorized an auction of surplus equipment on Nov. 1 at the old bus garage at East Jay Middle School. The auction will be conducted by Bricker Auction Company. Both Bricker and Loy Real Estate and Auctioneering had agreed to do the auction without a fee. Loy conducted a similar auction for Jay Schools last year.
•Approved a resolution for additional appropriation for the debt service fund.
•Accepted $298,483.98 in federal grant funds administered by the Indiana Department of Education. Those include grants of $12,046.18 for early student intervention, $62,912.51 related to rural and low-income students, $147,088.25 under Title II, $38,255 related to high ability students and $38,182.04 for formative assessments.
•Learned Jay Schools third graders continued to perform above state average on the IREAD test. Jay Schools had 92.1% passing, while the state average was 87.3% Bloomfield and Redkey elementaries both had 96.2% passing. Westlawn had 92.5%, and General Shanks 89.1%.
•Heard a presentation by the JCHS FFA soil judging team which recently took fourth place in the state and will compete nationally in May.
•Reviewed drafts of tentative school calendars for 2020-2021 which call for school to start on Aug. 12 for students and end on May 21.
•Hired Jill Larrowe as an instructional assistant at Redkey, Jamie Cornwell as a custodian at West Jay Middle School, Karen Rappley as an instructional assistant at Westlawn, Brandy Shannon as guidance secretary at JCHS, Tina Cavanaugh as an instructional assistant at Bloomfield, Ashlee Harris as a pre-school instructional assistant at Redkey, Ted Habegger and Nichole Myers as driver education teachers and Teresa Herman as a custodian at Redkey.
•Accepted the resignations of Donna Watson as a custodian at Redkey and Tonja McClain as nurse at East Jay Middle School.
•Terminated the employment of Cory Murtha as a custodian at West Jay.
•Approved leaves of absence for Bloomfield instructional assistant Linda Heitkamp and JCHS business teacher Rhonda Clott.
•Approved extracurricular assignments for Duane Monroe as sixth grade boys’ basketball coach at East Jay, Todd Farr as assistant eighth grade baseball coach, Bruce Wood as assistant wrestling coach at JCHS, Clayton Bailey as seventh grade football coach, Ben Antrim as seventh grade assistant football coach, Caden Stant as seventh grade assistant football coach, Liz Lawson as fine arts academic sponsor at JCHS, and Joseph Hall as seventh grade boys’ basketball coach at East Jay.
•Approved a field trip by JCHS FFA students to the national convention.
On subsequent days, one of their classes would be dropped in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Each class would be attended four days each week instead of five. Classes would be 55 to 57 minutes long.
That system, said Dodd, would allow for more opportunities for electives. The seven-period day would involve a bit more classroom time, but the revolving schedule would allow students to take more courses.
Both systems would reduce teacher preparation time.
“We are going to spend more time directly in front of students, teaching,” said Dodd.
He added, “The challenge for the ‘drop two’ is that it’s different.”
“This clearly has some complexity to it,” said Gulley. “To my mind it comes down to the opportunities weighed against the complexity.”
The curriculum committee will now be surveying teachers who would be working with a schedule change to measure their opinions.
Action on any change is expected at the school board’s next meeting.
In other business, the board:
•Formally adopted the Jay Schools budget of $39,002,170 for 2020. Of that amount, $13,816,380 will come from local property taxes. The balance will come from the state basic grant for education. Adoption was on a 6-0 vote with board member Ron Laux absent.
•Approved on a 6-0 vote a teacher contract agreement that had previously been ratified by the Jay Classroom Teachers Association and had been reviewed by the board at a special meeting Thursday. The contract calls for a 3.5% raise in the base rate of pay, revision of language related to the sick pay bank and raises for extracurricular assignments related to consolidation.
•Heard business manager Tarinna Morris report that she projects a cash balance in the education fund of $2,206,155 at the end of the calendar year. She noted that payroll expenses so far this school year are down $85,793.26 because of cost-cutting efforts.
•Authorized an auction of surplus equipment on Nov. 1 at the old bus garage at East Jay Middle School. The auction will be conducted by Bricker Auction Company. Both Bricker and Loy Real Estate and Auctioneering had agreed to do the auction without a fee. Loy conducted a similar auction for Jay Schools last year.
•Approved a resolution for additional appropriation for the debt service fund.
•Accepted $298,483.98 in federal grant funds administered by the Indiana Department of Education. Those include grants of $12,046.18 for early student intervention, $62,912.51 related to rural and low-income students, $147,088.25 under Title II, $38,255 related to high ability students and $38,182.04 for formative assessments.
•Learned Jay Schools third graders continued to perform above state average on the IREAD test. Jay Schools had 92.1% passing, while the state average was 87.3% Bloomfield and Redkey elementaries both had 96.2% passing. Westlawn had 92.5%, and General Shanks 89.1%.
•Heard a presentation by the JCHS FFA soil judging team which recently took fourth place in the state and will compete nationally in May.
•Reviewed drafts of tentative school calendars for 2020-2021 which call for school to start on Aug. 12 for students and end on May 21.
•Hired Jill Larrowe as an instructional assistant at Redkey, Jamie Cornwell as a custodian at West Jay Middle School, Karen Rappley as an instructional assistant at Westlawn, Brandy Shannon as guidance secretary at JCHS, Tina Cavanaugh as an instructional assistant at Bloomfield, Ashlee Harris as a pre-school instructional assistant at Redkey, Ted Habegger and Nichole Myers as driver education teachers and Teresa Herman as a custodian at Redkey.
•Accepted the resignations of Donna Watson as a custodian at Redkey and Tonja McClain as nurse at East Jay Middle School.
•Terminated the employment of Cory Murtha as a custodian at West Jay.
•Approved leaves of absence for Bloomfield instructional assistant Linda Heitkamp and JCHS business teacher Rhonda Clott.
•Approved extracurricular assignments for Duane Monroe as sixth grade boys’ basketball coach at East Jay, Todd Farr as assistant eighth grade baseball coach, Bruce Wood as assistant wrestling coach at JCHS, Clayton Bailey as seventh grade football coach, Ben Antrim as seventh grade assistant football coach, Caden Stant as seventh grade assistant football coach, Liz Lawson as fine arts academic sponsor at JCHS, and Joseph Hall as seventh grade boys’ basketball coach at East Jay.
•Approved a field trip by JCHS FFA students to the national convention.
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