By Jordan Studer
jstuder@wbcowqel.com
A big discussion at Thursday evening’s Bucyrus school board meeting was the number of job openings that the district currently has for the coming school year.
“We have six open positions right now to fill. One of the unique positions we have right now is the industrial technology position, Heath Sager’s position,” Superintendent Kevin Kimmel said.
Kimmel went on to describe the idea to transfer that position of industrial technology to Pioneer while still being housed in the Bucyrus district, like a satellite program.
“We’d really like to pilot a program that fits some of our local, regional needs as far as manufacturing and technology and robotics. And really provide an opportunity for our seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth graders, those four grade levels, to be able to be exposed to a number of different careers and programs that would then lead to a potential concentration of junior and senior level at Pioneer,” Kimmel clarified.
He went on to say that this program would be very unique to the district. “It’s nothing that’s been done in any of the school districts that lead into Pioneer, but it’s something that we are interested in investigating. The key is finding the right person that has the technology skills and the workplace skills in order to do a good job teaching our kids,” Kimmel said.
Another idea that was brought up at the meeting was granting high school students a quarter of a credit for physical education if they play two sports within one calendar year. This idea was produced in order to try to overcome the high school student’s issues of finding time to complete the entire physical education requirement. Along with this, however, students will still be required to take a half credit of physical education.
The idea is still very fresh and will be discussed further at the next meeting, in July, along with any other handbook issues that need to be approved.
The proposal for the Bucyrus High School annual band camp to Camp McPherson was approved with flying colors at the meeting as well.
It was mentioned that the tennis court repairs that were approved last meeting will be completed by next Wednesday.
The tennis courts are not the only thing that will have a new appearance to them, however. When looking out at the football field, the new scoreboard can now be seen too.
This past week the school district completed a purchase of a 2013 Honda Odyssey mini-van for transportation for smaller athletic teams, such as the golf team, as well as special needs students and any other transportation issue.
During future school board meetings, the board would like to discuss the issues that the district has had with Blizzard Bags, that supplement for calamity days, for future snow day issues. They felt there needs to be more set requirements for these Blizzard Bags.
“The goal is, if we get in a position where we have to use calamity days, there is a much more detailed, outlined expectation of the teachers, and more accountability going forward,” Kimmel said.