NORTH ROBINSON—On Monday evening, the Colonel Crawford Board of Education held its monthly meeting.

Board member Norm Huber was honored for twenty years of service by Mark Bobo on behalf of the Ohio School Board Association.

“People don’t understand how much time, effort, and dedication it takes to be a board member, especially these days when there is a lot going on in public education, and any person that decides to be dedicated to their community in this way is certainly worthy of thanks and gratitude, and tonight I have the privilege of honoring Mr. Norman Huber for twenty years of board service,” Bobo said. “I often say that if you can make it through one year of board service, you’re awesome. Twenty years is out of this sight.”

The board approved J&F Construction to oversee the design-build project for the Multi-Purpose Building.

It will take approximately ninety days for plans to be drawn up on the project. Groundbreaking will hopefully begin in October, with a tentative completion date in August of ’24.

“We are still working through the financing piece as far as the lease. These projects we’ve been doing for the last two and a half years with ESSER dollars, that was money that was going to come out of the general fund. We’ve been fortunate that the federal government is giving away money, and we put it in brick and mortar—we fixed the air handling, fixed the boilers, we did the roof here. So, we’ve been able to save money by using federal money that they’ve been giving us and grant money to do things, so it’s allowed us to stock pool money that we could use for something we’ve wanted for a long time,” Superintendent Todd Martin said. “And the lease option is going to help us with the payment plan that we could make this an affordable option for Colonel Crawford. We’re pretty excited about this.”

The Multi-Purpose building will have an all-purpose floor, a big curtain that comes down that will divide two 50 ft. by 94 ft. courts, nets, and cages that come down for volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball, and it’s going to be used for recess when the weather doesn’t permit students to go outside.

“We have a place for STEM, if we want to do robotics now, we could actually do something during the day after school. The use of it is unlimited as to what we can do,” Martin said.

The Multi-Purpose gym will fit in the open area between the cafetorium and the hallway heading back to the high school wing. The gym will be approximately 10,500 sq. ft.

The board accepted the resignation of head baseball coach Dan Gorbett.

Gorbett initially coached the Eagles from 1981-1995 before returning in 2018 after coaching at Galion and Ontario.

In May of this year, Gorbett achieved his 600th win as a head coach. Gorbett is only the 24th coach in Ohio to do so.

The board will have a quick special meeting on July 10 at 7 p.m. and the next regular meeting on July 31 at 7 p.m.