By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
Buckeye Central took another step in the direction of finding a new superintendent Thursday with help from Ashland University.
The Buckeye Central Board of Education approved the services of Ashland University’s Telego Center for Educational Improvement to provide superintendent search services. The Telego Center will also provide an examination of the administrative structure of the school district for a total cost of $5,000.
Dr. Gene Linton of the Telego Center was on hand during the meeting and gave an outline of the process that he and Dr. Dwight McElfresh will use in the search for Buckeye’s permanent superintendent. Linton also provided a copy of the planned timeline of the search, which would have a new superintendent in place between May 12 and Aug. 1 of this year.
Elizabeth Diesch explained how the school found out about the Telego Center.
“Ashland actually reached out to us and said here is a service that we offer, and we were looking at the options on the table. We know OSBA could help us, we know Mid-Ohio Could Help us, but when Ashland reached out we wanted to get to know them more,” Diesch said. “And in sitting down and talking with them, looking at what they could offer us and their numbers it made the most sense for Buckeye”
It was announced Tuesday night that Buckeye Central is receiving grants totaling $20,903 to go towards an outdoor learning center.
Fifteen thousand dollars of those grants are coming from General Electric: $10,000 from the General Electric Foundation. and $5,000 from the Bucyrus GE plant.
Plant manager Matt Novack explained how Buckeye Central was chosen for the GE grants.
“There’s a definite connection between Marianne and Dave Williamson and the job that Dave does for our community, as well Marianne presenting her idea out in front of the community,” Novack said. “We happened to see it the last time she presented it. From there the idea kind of took hold, and we continued to work with Marianne until we got the $10,000 from GE.
“Marianne Williamson, she wrote a grant. We submitted her grant to the G.E. Foundation, it went through an approval cycle, a global approval cycle, and was approved by the foundation.”
The announcement came during a presentation with plans for the learning center by Buckeye Central Middle School students and science teacher Marianne Williamson.
“We started about 18 months ago with the beginning of 2012-2013 school year, and I wanted to try a PBL, a Problem Based Learning unit, that was meaningful to the kids, and meaningful to the district, and a problem that we could solve and learn from at the same time,” Williamson said. “We started with the bioswale, it just didn’t look nice and wasn’t what it was intended.”
Williamson soon took her students out to the bioswale and began studying the precocity, water quality and soil samples.
“When we went through all these proposals we discovered that everything came back to being able to learn outdoors, and we wanted a place to do that,” Williamson said. “We surveyed the residents in May and they wholeheartedly supported the idea of an outdoor learning center.”
The project was also the recipient of $2,903 in grant monies from the North Central Electric People’s Fund. North Central Electric representative Ellen Lynch presented the grant during the presentation.
Another $2,000 for the project came from the Buckeye Central Endowment Fund, as well as $1,000 donated by Studer-Obringer.
The Buckeye Central Board of Education approved all Items on the consent agenda including the resignation of Dennis Heydinger as full-time bus driver and appointing Cheryl Thomson as long-term substitute for Nan Chorba as K-8 principal.