By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
With the snow and wind blowing Thursday night the Buckeye Central Board of Education members met for their annual organizational meeting as well as their first regular meeting for 2015.
Board President Missy McDougal was re-elected to that same position for 2015. Likewise, Steve Aichholz will return as vice president.
The board discussed the possibility of going paper free for future board meetings. Superintendent Mark Robinson mentioned that using Blue Sky software was an easy way to put an agenda together to include attachments in order to save on the use of paper for board packets.
One issue Robinson has with the program was that some of the items such as the treasurer’s report is marked private.
“It bothers me because it looks like we are hiding something, but we are not. Any of the items marked private can be seen with a public request of information,” Robinson said.
Board member Beth Diesch added that eventually they want to increase transparency.
“We want to work towards trust in the community and increase transparency. We hope that in two years the new system will be made available online for everyone to see whenever they want,” Diesch said.
During the organizational meeting the board approved $3,500 for the Board Service Fund to cover board in-service activities, and expenses.
The board set up its 2015 committees, The Financial Committee will be a rotating cast of the board members, Chris Martin will handle Legistlative Committee, Beth Diesch will handle the Student Achievement Committee, Steve Aichholz, and Diesch will head up the Policy Committee, and Missy McDougal and Diesch will be on the Negotiations Committee.
The board approved all items on the consent agenda during the organizational meeting. These items include authorizing the treasurer to pay the bills, invest interim and inactive funds, and allows for the superintendent to hire personnel and accept resignations.
Scott Scriven and Wahoff, LLP, Bricker and Eckler, LLP, and Squire, Paton, Boggs, LLP were approved as legal counsel for the 2015 calendar year.
The school board agreed to keep their monthly meetings the same as the 2014 year which is at 7 p.m. the second Thursday of the month in the multipurpose room.
During the regular meeting the Buckeye Central Board approved the final reading of policy revisions, as well as an addendum to the Mid-Ohio ESC 2014-2015 Service Agreement.
Todd Messmer was approved as the junior varsity softball coach.
The next Buckeye Central Board of Education meeting will be held at 7 p.m. on Feb. 12.