Dr. Tom Edington, superintendent, at the Wawasee School Board meeting.

By Tim Ashley
InkFreeNews

SYRACUSE — With only two days before the start of the 2020-21 school year, much of the shorter than normal monthly meeting of the Wawasee School Board involved preparations for the start of school. The meeting was held Tuesday evening, Aug. 11, in the Warrior Room of Wawasee High School in Syracuse.

Stating the obvious, there will be many changes and adjustments focusing on the safety and well-being of students. Dr. Tom Edington, superintendent of the Wawasee Community School Corporation, noted in his report to the board school nurses will be staying 30 minutes longer each day and separate places have been designated in each school building for students who are showing symptoms of the coronavirus. Cafeteria lines and food choices will change and at least a few schools will have assigned seats for students. There will be more covered or wrapped food items.

Cleaning routines will increase in scope and will continue to change as needed. There will be separate bus routes for Wawasee Middle School and the high school.

Dr. Stephen Troyer, assistant superintendent, told the board there will be one teacher per grade level at the elementary level working with those students who chose the virtual learning option. The same teacher at each grade level will work with students from all three elementary schools. At the middle school level, some teachers will have time set aside in their schedules to work with virtual students and the high school will use the APEX system already being used by alternative school students.

School days will start 30 minutes later at each school, meaning start times could be anywhere from 8:30 a.m. to 8:55 a.m.

Troyer noted there is a school reopening tool kit link on the school corporation website, www.wawasee.k12.in.us, that has all the resources needed for finding out about the school reopening plan.

In other business, Troyer said there were approximately 150 kids participating in summer school that finished Aug. 7. He noted safety protocols put on paper did not always work in real time situations and some switching had to be done when the mask mandate was issued by Gov. Holcomb.

Also on the agenda, textbook rental fees for the next two school years were approved by the school board. Significant increases will occur in grade three ($160.10 to $187.10), grade four ($161.05 to $188.05) and grade five ($155.35 to $182.35). Only slight increases will occur in grades K to two. Troyer said the larger increases are due to a new reading and literacy program approved by the board in April.

Among the many personnel recommendations approved by the board were the retirement of Diane Williams as guidance office secretary at the high school, Hannah Pawlicki hired as a high school language arts teacher, Daniel Wray hired as a high school chemistry teacher, Stephanie Brown hired as a Syracuse Elementary teacher, David Myers hired as a WMS math teacher and Seth Cripe will be a Pathways industrial technology teacher.

Other agenda items included:

• Approval was given to a $5,000 grant from the Dekko Foundation to the Wawasee Early Childhood initiative training.

• All Wawasee school buses passed the yearly Indiana State Police inspection.

• Ed Rock of Kosciusko County Emergency Management donated 1,300 surgical masks to the school corporation.

• The annual lease agreement with Kosciusko County Head Start to lease space in North Webster Elementary was approved as it has been for the last five years.

• The 2020-21 Wawasee Building Trades project will involve working with a contractor to renovate the current central office once everything is moved to the new central office.