BUCYRUS—The Wynford board of education held their monthly meeting on Monday night.
To start the meeting, Wynford sophomore Jacob Jennings spoke to the board about chess club.
Back in his eighth-grade year during Covid, Jennings found himself with fifteen or twenty minutes to spare during his thirty-minute activity period and started bringing in his chess board to play.
It was about this time that he was playing at home, getting into competitive chess, and was watching one of the world’s current best chess players on YouTube talk about how his high school chess club helped get him to where he was.
This led Jennings to ask principal Julie Miller if a chess club could be formed, to which she agreed.
Last year, by the end of the year, there were nine students involved in the club, whereas now there are seventeen members. The club meets every Friday during activity period to play.
By next school year, Jennings is hoping to put together a tournament team featuring the club’s five best players to travel around and compete and is brainstorming fundraising ideas for the club.
Tournaments, however, usually are in bigger city areas such as the Cleveland and Dayton areas and the Greater Cleveland Scholastic Chess League. Research is going to be done to see if there are high school tournaments closer to the Bucyrus area.
The last tournament held in the area was on Jennings put on at the library.
Superintendent Forrest Trisler offered the new Community Center as a potential place for tournaments to be held.
Under the New Business section of the agenda, one policy sparked in-depth conversation by the board—Interscholastic Extracurricular Eligibility.
Board member Levi Hartschuh was the first to state his thoughts on the matter.
“In here it states that a student must obtain—following the OHSAA guidelines—a minimum GPA of a 1.0 on a 4.0 grading scale. Personally, I think that we should hold our students to a little bit higher of a standard as a school. I’d personally like to see at least a 1.5 GPA minimum.”
Board president Scott Langenderfer offered his opinion as to why he feels that the minimum requirement should stay the same.
“Years ago, we went to a 1.0 because we felt that we were not allowing enough investment in kids who may or may not need something outside of the school day to keep them enticed to be involved in school and to be good citizens and so on. It worked very well for some kids to keep them involved and their GPA actually rose after that, and some kids it did not,” Langenderfer said. “In my opinion, I would hate to deny somebody to access to an opportunity to be a part of something like that where maybe they need that coach, or that teammate, or somebody to take him under his wing to help him or her along to become a better citizen of Wynford Schools and later on. I can tell a bunch of kids right now that are a bunch of success outside of Wynford High School that if we changed this to 1.5, initially they would not have been able to have been a part of those athletic programs, kept them on the outside, and wouldn’t have allowed them to participate. When they participated, they had a bit of discipline in their life, they had a bit of a regimen in their life that they may or may not get at home, and it led them to be better people of Wynford.”
Middle school principal Brent Konkle pitched the idea of having students who have a GPA below a 1.5 participate in a mandatory study table twice a week.
Board members agreed that this plan seemed plausible. However, the official language on the policy has not been changed. If this stipulation were to be added in, it would not go into effect until the 2023-2024 school year.
To be eligible to participate in athletics, high school students must pass at least five credit hours, and middle school students must pass at least four credit hours. If a student takes six credit hours and fails a class but still passes the five mandatory credit hours, they are still eligible to compete.
According to Wynford’s current grading scale, a sixty percent is a ‘D,’ and a fifty-nine percent is an ‘F.’
The next heavily discussed topic at the meeting was the proposed “dead” week.
A “dead” week is one where there are no athletic events of any kind during that week. The proposed week was for July 3 through July 9 to fall over the Fourth of July.
Part of the thought behind the “dead” week was for families to take vacations then so their student-athletes were not missing practices. However, it was pointed out that not all families are able to take vacations during that time, and students shouldn’t be shorted family time or feel obligated to skip family time in order to not get in trouble at practice.
“I would like to see our coaches be very strong and allowing the child off whenever their family is allowed to go on vacation,” board member Brett Ridge said.
The atmosphere surrounding students having to take time off for family vacations or other noteworthy events, such as county fairs, has changed and is more “forgiving,” however, whereas at some schools and with some coaches, they would get upset with the student-athlete for not putting the sport first, even with prior obligations or things out of his or her control, and would lead to the athlete potentially facing repercussions.
“Part of the problem with the dead week also is, ‘Look, tell your mom and dad here is the week where you should do all of your stuff’ and it can’t always be done that way,” Langenderfer said. “If we have good coaches, they don’t make the kid feel like crap, or the parents feel like crap, because they’re taking a week’s vacation at another time. I don’t think that should be an issue. I like the idea of a ‘dead’ week to get some facilities cleaned up—the weight room, the locker rooms, and the gymnasium—for no other reason than that. I don’t want coaches to use that as an excuse to force kids to come at a time when they can’t help when mom or dad can take a vacation.”
The other intention for the “dead” week for Wynford is to get the gym floors done in that time.
Whether or not a “dead” week is necessary will be discussed at a later meeting as the issue was tabled.
The board approved a facility rental agreement with The Chandelier in Tiffin for prom on April 22, 2023. Students on the prom committee voted to have prom elsewhere based on their own wishes and the wishes of their fellow classmates.
The discussion was had as to potentially offering transportation due to safety concerns with driving, parking, and the many one-way streets in Tiffin that students may or may not be familiar with.
The potential of having a “crash course” on driving in Tiffin by creating a video to show the students exactly how to get to the venue and where to park was also discussed.
Other noteworthy events at the meeting included: approving the band trip to King’s Island on May 5 and 6; accepting a donation of school supplies from Gabrielle Shears; accepting a donation of a 24-pack of Scotties tissues by Nicole and Amos Wolfe family; accepting the donation of a buckeye tree and commemorative plaque in memory of Norman and Ellie Schiefer by Fred and Jaclyn Hendricks; accepting a donation of 24 Trailmaker backpacks and school supplies by Justin Bessler and approving a shared services agreement with Bucyrus City Schools for the swimming coach due to Bucyrus having only one athlete participating on the swim team.