School Board Meeting

Notes September 12, 2005

South Dearborn Community School Corporation

School Board Meeting


1. Minutes Unanimously Approved

2. Policy Changes recommended by the Indiana School Boards Association. Six changes recommended. They read the titles only and approved all six unanimously.

Only real concern with policy changes came from Terry Luhrsen regarding injectible medications to be administered by school staff trained by a Registered Nurse. He questioned if that was really good enough. Answer seemed to be that’s what the statute says...so that’s good enough. (Perhaps Mr. Luhrsen would like to see RNs in all of our schools. I know I would like to see that.)

All policy changes were related to changes in state law. (Unfortunately I don’t know what they are.)

3. FCCLA Cluster Meeting Field Trip Nov. 9-13 to Hartford by way of New York City by charter bus approved unanimously. If trip is not funded by grant it will cost $315 per student.

4. Donation of $3,630 for Tennis Court Screens accepted.

5. Donation of $46.93 to SDMS accepted from Target.

6. Discussion of Disposal of Weight Room Equipment. The plan is to sell equipment to the City of Aurora for $1. Aurora plans to give to the fire department. Equipment is still being used.

Pat Rahe wants administration to ask if it is needed in any other place at South Dearborn. She suggested the equipment be placed in teacher lounges.

Daryl Cutter thought the equipment should be offered to all the Fire Departments.

The item was tabled.

New weight room equipment is ready. But administration has asked that delivery be delayed.

Administration denied Football team has not had access to weight room as reported in the newspaper. They claimed there was only a week or a weekend without weight room access.

7. Budget...Unanimously approved. They had the public hearing and a budget workshop for the board. (Perhaps the workshop should have been public.) No real discussion

8. School Calendar. Building Administrators recommended adding missed days to the end of the year. Terry Larsen indicated his plans were already made. His kids won’t be in school those three days. And the board or administration (I don’t know who he was referring to) would have to answer to his daughter for messing up her twelve years of perfect attendance.

9. Vouchers paid. Karla Raab was wondering about Character Education Supplies for Manchester School. She would like their program extended to other schools if it works out well.

10. Verkler gave construction update.

There was discussion about recess at the Middle School...Students rushed out of Cafeteria and sit in Gym for 12 minutes. (There is no way to have a safe and effective recess with 300 students in a gymnasium...my personal opinion here) Children can’t go outside due to construction.

11. SAT report. They did not share the graphs with the public. From the discussion, it was obvious scores are not as high as previous year. Verbal is lower. Math is higher. (This information will be available on IDEANET under K-12 school data. I don’t know how long it will be before this is published by the DOE.)

12. There was a discussion about Advanced Placement Classes. Some wanted to know why we only offered two. They think teachers needed special certification. (Maybe we don’t have enough appropriate subject area teachers in the High School for the program.)

13. They discussed upcoming teacher in-service. Poverty and writing for the ISTEP will be subject.

14. South Dearborn was one of the 19 school districts in the state that narrowed the achievement gap. (The poverty gap was narrowed. I think we can thank Aurora Teachers for that.)

Submitted by Karen Loveland