MOUNT VERNON — New board members Sharon Fair and Jody Goetzman, along with re-elected board member Margie Bennett, took the oath of office when the Mount Vernon Board of Education met Monday night.
The board elected Ian Watson to serve as president. Bennett is vice president, and the legislative and student achievement liaisons are Steve Hughes and Bennett, respectively. Dr. Brent Nimeth was designated the official physician for the Mount Vernon City School District, and board meetings in 2008 will be held on the first or second Monday of each month. The dates will be published in the roll call section of the Mount Vernon News.
The board also passed resolutions authorizing the superintendent and treasurer to take the necessary financial and personnel actions to operate the district on a day-to-day basis, and Superintendent Steve Short gave the board certificates of appreciation from the Ohio School Boards Association in honor of School Board Recognition Month.
At the start of the regular January business meeting, parent volunteer Kim Fields received the Pleasant Street Behind the Scenes award. Principal Karen Boylan said Fields can be seen anywhere in the school, working individually with students, in the classrooms working with the teachers or in the office copying papers.
A handful of first- and second-grade students from Pleasant Street also reprised for the board sections of the fall Vocabulary Parade. Based on the Ohio academic standards, the second-grade students learned about habitats, animals and plants in those habitats, and the five elements needed for survival. They then designed costumes to represent a plant or animal from a particular habitat and wore them in the fall parade. At the board meeting, William Browning was a duck living in a pond; Zach Hite portrayed an ocean lobster; Katarina Quigg was a sea anemone; and Lauren Worley represented a forest rabbit.
Also based on academic standards, the Pleasant Street first-grade pupils learned how to predict the meaning of compound words by examining the meaning of each part of the word. Their costumes reflected both parts: Dominic Harrington, underground; Taylor Henson, cowgirl; Victoria Keegan, snowball; and Mackenzie Rayburn, strawberry.
Regarding personnel, the board accepted letters of resignation from Shae Baxter, freshman softball coach; Rebecca Cronk, achievement coach, retroactive to Jan. 1; Emily Wise, substitute teacher; and Colleen Wurzer, second-grade teacher at Twin Oak Elementary, retroactive to Dec. 31. Pam Roberts was employed as assistant treasurer, retroactive to Jan. 2, and a number of custodian transfers were approved: Jim Benins, to second-shift at the high school, effective Jan. 7; Marna Burwell, Central Office and Twin Oak, retroactive to Dec. 20; and Russ Walls, to first shift at the high school, effective Jan. 7. Bill Ferrell was employed as a custodian at the high school, effective Jan. 4, pending favorable drug screening and background check, and Judy Woosley was hired as a cook, retroactive to Jan. 2. The board added to the classified and certified substitute lists, and granted a number of supplemental contracts for home instructors and Ohio Graduation Test intervention tutors as well.
Two representatives from the Mount Vernon school board were appointed to serve on the Knox County Career Center Board of Education. Hughes was appointed to a three-year term retroactive to Jan. 1, and Watson to a one-year appointment to cover the unexpired term of Kathy Sherman.
In addition to routine fiscal actions, the board also made committee appointments for 2008 as follows: Personnel, Watson; long-range planning, Fair; buildings and grounds, Goetzman and Hughes; educational advisory council, Bennett and Goetzman; instructional technology, Fair; and gifted education, Fair.
The next regular meeting of the Mount Vernon school board will be Feb. 4 at 7:30 p.m. in the middle school library.