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Upgrades at GHS set to move forward
As facility upgrades at Greencastle Community Schools move closer to becoming reality, the biggest piece of that puzzle took a big step forward in February.
In a special meeting earlier in February, the Greencastle School Board awarded a contract to Weddell Brothers Construction, Bloomington, to perform extensive upgrades at Greencastle High School and McAnally Center in the amount of $26,585,400.
Revisiting the matter during Monday’s regular school board meeting, Supt. Jeff Gibboney said a meeting is set for March 10 with Weddell Brothers to discuss the sequencing and phasing of the project.
He noted that the project will mobilize in April.
The project will provide a total remodel of Greencastle High School, most notably decades-old science labs and the media center area.
Additionally, a connector will be constructed between GHS and McAnally, providing a secure, enclosed walkway for students when they must travel between the two buildings for physical education, theater, music or extracurricular activities.
Construction at McAnally will also add locker room space, upgraded and enlarged wrestling and weight rooms and provide gym space.
One drawback to the current plan is that the GHS baseball and softball fields cannot currently be moved off site, as had been originally proposed.
Gibboney told the Banner Graphic that in doing the facilities study, school leaders learned that the community supports upgrades to the various school facilities, including the proposed move of the fields to the Greencastle Transportation Center property.
“We saw that overall there’s support. The community wanted to see these things happen,” Gibboney said. “Right or wrong, everything’s more expensive right now.”
For now, then, some more necessary upgrades are being addressed, including security at all schools (including the McAnally connector) and better academic facilities.
“We want to be responsible, so we determined that we cannot do the offsite baseball and softball fields, as we want to finish the high school project and protect those later projects,” Gibboney said. “We need to complete the secure entrances. We made cuts wherever possible and necessary.”
By setting priorities, officials are keeping the item within the realm of the most recent bond sale, thus not raising taxes.
Gibboney said the new fields are “obviously a lower item on the list than a secure entrance at an elementary or a middle school science lab.”
While the work on the GHS campus would leave the fields landlocked, another portion of the proposal is to build an access road off of Washington Street to run between the western wall of the high school and the tennis courts.
Additionally, to open up the space further, the corporation’s maintenance department will no longer be housed in the back of the high school. Officials have met with Graber Brothers about constructing a new maintenance storage building at the transportation center site.
One upgrade that should not cost the school any additional money is a new fabrication lab at the high school. The board signed an interlocal agreement with the City of Greencastle, accepting the $195,000 the Greencastle Redevelopment Commission approved recently to add a Fab Lab to the high school.
The grant is identical to the grant that built the middle school Fab Lab before the current school year.
In other business:
• Assistant Supt. Jenny French reported on the status of various standardized tests in the school, noting that the second of three rounds of annual NWEA testing was complete for students between kindergarten and 10th grade.
Additionally, she said that juniors will soon be taking the SAT and third-graders the iRead test.
The Department of Education recently added an option for schools that allows second-graders to take the iRead as well. However, even those who pass the test would have to take it again, so the school opted out.
“We already have plenty of data and our K-2 students and we didn’t want to give up that instructional time,” French said.
She noted, though, that Cloverdale and Clay City also opted out but were told by the state that their second-graders would be taking the test.
“Our prediction is this is just one step closer to standardized testing for second-graders, and they just need that baseline data,” French said.
She also noted that new high ability tests will soon be administered, as well as students from third through eighth-grade taking iLearn in April.
• French also discussed the plans for summer school.
Last year, the school attempted a “jump start” approach in which elementary and middle school students did summer school late in the summer as a way of getting ahead for the coming school year.
She reported, however, that the data showed no benefit, so the program will be moved back to June, concurrent with the high school summer school program.
French also noted that the middle school will have a summer camp-style program utilizing the Fab Lab, giving students two weeks to learn how to use all the technology in the lab and to “build up some leaders” in the school.
• Gibboney noted the school corporation recently had its spring count day, with GCSC totaling 1,744 students, down 29 from fall count day.
“That’s not drastically different from any statewide trend,” Gibboney noted, saying that early graduates, dropouts and moves can all contribute to such trends.
The superintendent also said the current junior and senior classes are smaller than normal, so he foresees an increase in students over the next two years.
• February students of the month were recognized. These include: Deer Meadow, Anara Pettit; Ridpath, Eliott Wright; Tzouanakis, Sophie Cole; middle school, Rachel Hebert; and high school, Addison Edwards.
Students honored in January were Deer Meadow, Bowen O’Hair; Ridpath, Mylah Hedrick and Boston Mullis; Tzouanakis, Deaken Curtis; middle school, Jeremiah Weir; high school, Ben Huff.
• The board approved a pair of donations: $600 from Beech Grove United Methodist Church to Tzouanakis Intermediate School and $500 from Kathleen Russell to the Greencastle High School DECA Club.
• A number of personnel items were approved:
Resignations: Kim Rossok as Tzouanakis instructional assistant and Deanna Young as Deer Meadow noon aide.
Termination: Robert Higgins as Tzouanakis custodian.
Leaves of absence: Holli Hill, FMLA as Deer Meadow teacher; Jody Cowger, unpaid LOA as bus driver; Frank Shafer, unpaid LOA as Tzouanakis custodian; Ellen Ellerman, unpaid LOA as bus driver.
New hires: Deanna Young, Deer Meadow noon aide; Kyley Lewis, Tzouanakis attendance secretary; Gary Walls, Tzouanakis custodian; Levi Hoffman, GHS instructional assistant/media assistant; Macy Terhune, Deer Meadow preschool assistant; Alexander Hanks, Tzouanakis instructional assistant; Dylan Owens, Tzouanakis custodian; Isabel Dawes, K-4 after school program instructor.
Substitutes: Tiffany Trissel and Angela Garl, substitute bus drivers; Paige Price, substitute teacher; Melony Terry, substitute custodian.
Extracurricular activities: Christopher Mitchell II approved as GHS volunteer assistant track coach and Lyndie Plummer hired as GHS assistant softball coach.