BUCYRUS—The Wynford board of education held their meeting for the month of January late last week.
During the organizational portion of the meeting, Scott Langenderfer was reelected as board president, and Mark Johnson was reelected as board vice president.
Levi Hartschuh was appointed as the legislative liaison, and Matt Stahl was appointed as the student achievement liaison.
Levi Hartschuh and Brett Ridge were appointed to the policy committee; Brett Ridge and Matt Stahl were appointed to the finance committee; and Scott Langenderfer and Mark Johnson were appointed to the buildings and grounds committee.
After being thoroughly discussed at many meetings, the board finally voted on the interscholastic extracurricular eligibility policy.
Debate on the issue originally began back in September when board member Levi Hartschuh said that he would like to see the minimum GPA raised to a 1.5 instead of a 1.0 to hold Wynford students to a higher standard.
The current policy, as set by the OHSAA, is that a high school student must be passing five credits and have a minimum of a 1.0 cumulative GPA on a 4.0-grade scale.
Board member Brett Ridge opened the discussion on the topic, “I think it would be hard to explain to a taxpayer how we are placing athletics over academics. And some will see it strictly as that.
Most of the taxpayers didn’t know that we had such a low requirement from the state or from the district level to participate. Most saw it as a privilege to play a sport, and I still see is as a privilege to play a sport and not by doing the basic minimum with what the state requires.”
Matt Stahl was the next to offer his opinion, “It is a privilege to play a sport, but a lot of kids come from underprivileged homes, and they have other things going on and they don’t come from those perfect fairy tale houses where they come to school and work on their studies, and someone is helping them. Some of them are helping raise little sisters and brothers. I am fine with it the way it is.”
Board president Scott Langenderfer backed up Stahl’s sentiments, “Like I said before, that could be the one instance where those kids can get a sense of belonging and get the desire to do something they have fun with or want to do. It keeps them interested and keeps them a part of the process. It might be the only place they can get any type of brotherhood or sisterhood.”
Mark Johnson agreed with both Stahl and Langenderfer, stating that what it comes down to for him is he can’t see leaving a student out of sports because it may be the one thing that they have.
Levi Hartschuh, the board member who sparked the discussion back in September, agreed with Ridge on the issue.
“I guess that I disagree, and I think that the GPA should be higher, I think that we should hold our education to a higher standard. I believe that participating in athletics is a privilege and it is just something that we offer as a school and the priority should be the education of our students. And I think that when you look at where we were with the grade card, and I know we’re still coming out of Covid, but we are the lowest local district in the county—we have all the city schools below us—you have Buckeye, Crawford, then Wynford which, what I am looking at from the performance index, we are almost eleven points off those schools. So what example are we showing our students when we are saying that they can do a 1.0 worth of work and still get to partake in extracurriculars that we offer as a school,” Hartschuh said.
Langenderfer followed with, “What makes you assume though, that if they drop out of athletics, their GPA is going to increase, and they are going to do academically better? You’ve just taken away what they care about.”
“What bothers me is we are arguing over a .5 increase on a GPA. If you can’t do the bare minimum, you’re not going to get the promotion, you’re not going to get the raise, at college, we have to have a 1.5 to even stay in college. I don’t understand arguing over a .5 increase to expect our students to do just a little bit more. It’ll help our school look better when people are coming into the district and evaluating which school, they want to send their kids to,” Hartschuh said.
No changes would go into effect this year, but if they would, two students wouldn’t be able to participate in sports, and sixteen freshmen wouldn’t be due to middle schoolers not receiving GPAs at Wynford.
The vote was 3-2 in favor of keeping the interscholastic extracurricular eligibility requirements as is.
The board is still looking into the idea of a study table being implemented, whether by board policy or athletic code and will have further discussion on that in the future.
In the old business portion of the meeting, a purchase order to Adena to reflect the final retainage amount to be paid upon completion of punch list items on the middle/high school building construction project and final payments for the elementary renovation and old high school demolition projects.
The board meetings for 2023 are as follows: February 13; March 20; April 17; May 15; June 20; July 10; August 14; September 20; October 16; November 20; and December 19. Meetings all begin at 5:30.