NORTH ROBINSON — The Colonel Crawford Board of Education heard a proposal renovation to a school facility during its meeting Monday evening.
Luke Biederman, a ninth-grade student at Colonel Crawford, presented his idea to add sheet metal dugouts to the softball field near the elementary playground.
That softball field currently has only benches for its players, with no protection from the elements. Colonel Crawford has recently entered a league for 7 to 12-year-old players and would like for the facility to be more welcoming to visiting teams.
Board member Scott Rike asked Biederman why he chose this project.
“I’ve watched a lot of the scouts in my troop take the easy route and give back to the camp that we usually use because our scout master can actually sign off as a beneficiary, and that was the easy route because you would only have to get approved once,” Biederman said. “I’ve been going here for 11 years now, and I wanted to give back to the school instead.”
The board approved his project, and Luke will begin the designing, building and fundraising process once his project is approved in the district level of scouts.
Also during the meeting, substitute bus driver Roger Rowlinson approached the board about receiving more trips, as he says that it seems like the same one or two people always get all of the trips to athletic events, and with his wife recently passing, he would like the opportunity to run more trips to take athletes to their games or meets.
Superintendent Todd Martin told Rowlinson that he will look into the wording of the contract for the bus drivers to see if there can be more trips given to subs.
The board had the first reading on legislation from the Ohio School Board Association, including one piece dealing with the transportation of students—it states though it is not mandatory to transport high school students, if the district provides transportation to students on the first day, you must do so all year, despite if there is a levy failure in November, like one school in Columbus had happen.
Other pieces of legislation were modified during the meeting to include the prohibition of the usage of vapes smoking devices.
Truancy legislation was modified so a student cannot be penalized for missing school due to illness or medical treatment, such as, but not limited to chemotherapy and other medical treatments. It is only after non-medical misses (38 hours a month, 65 hours a year) that there is a truancy letter sent home to families.
Starting in 2021, two years of show choir may count for the physical education requirement and taking/passing computer coding classes may count as a foreign language.
The next board meeting is Nov. 25 at 7 p.m.