ISTEP+ has been plagued with difficulties especially the last few years and those difficulties are apparently not a thing of the past. During the regular monthly meeting of the Wawasee School Board Tuesday evening in Syracuse, the board heard a report from Joy Goshert, director of instruction and curriculum, about concerns with online ISTEP+ testing.

Goshert noted the most recent ISTEP+ test received a lot of publicity due to its length and was broken up into two forms. Wawasee students in grades three through eight were able to complete part one of the testing. But part two of the test is still a concern because of local Internet connection problems for Wawasee Middle School in particular. The school board authorized petitioning the state to allow for part two to be taken with paper and pencil instead of online.

Goshert also noted the Indiana Department of Education did not provide clear guidance on how this particular ISTEP+ test, which is considered a pilot test, has students within the same school corporation taking different assessments.

Also concerning ISTEP+, Dr. Tom Edington, Wawasee superintendent, shared a letter drafted by the Northeast Indiana Superintendents Study Council (of which he is a part of) and will be sent to legislators and others asking for Northwest Evaluation Association testing to replace the ISTEP+ test. Wawasee and other school districts prefer to use NWEA as an assessment tool. Indiana House Bill 566 encourages IDOE to examine an alternative test or assessment to replace ISTEP+.

In other business, the board approved awarding the bid for summer capital funds projects to Milestone Construction with a base bid of $583,000. Total cost, with the alternate scenarios figured in, comes to $670,200. Kari Vilamaa of Barton-Coe-Vilamaa of Fort Wayne said there were only three bids submitted. Milestone had the lowest base bid and it came in a little more than what was budgeted so replacing the underground fuel storage tanks at Wawasee High School will be postponed until later.

Also on the agenda, the board approved the school corporation entering into a purchase agreement to buy a 50-foot strip of land dividing the site of the future Syracuse Elementary School with an adjacent property owned by the Eagles Aerie 3760. School corporation attorney James Flecker said owning the strip of land would make the property contiguous for the school corporation. Purchase price for the 1.1 acre piece of land will be $20,035.

In other business, the board approved Benchmark Literacy to be used for language arts reading materials for grades kindergarten through fifth. The last adoption of elementary reading materials was in the spring of 2008. Goshert noted the current reading materials do not meet some of the newer state standards.

This will mean language arts textbook fees will be approximately $10 to $15 higher per student, depending on the grade, when compared to last school year, but other subject areas may have lower textbook fees for the 2015-16 school year.