The Indian Lake School District once again will have a Head Start program on its campus after negotiations between the superintendent and administrators of the federal program.
“I’m excited to say that starting next school year, we will be bringing the program to the Indian Lake Elementary School,” Superintendent Pat O’Donnell said at the Monday evening board of education meeting.
The federal program, which provides preschool for 20 to 25 children ages 3 to 5 of low-to-moderate income families, once was located in the former Lakeview Elementary School, but in more recent times the children from the Indian Lake district were consolidated with Riverside children and bussed to DeGraff.
Mr. O’Donnell said he learned the arrangement was ending in the 2016-17 school year and began a conversation with Head Start representatives from the regional office in Miami County.
The federal program pays the salary of one teacher and two assistants, either provides transportation itself or contracts with the district to provide transportation and pays the costs of students’ meals while at the school, the superintendent said.
The only cost to the district would be the classroom space to house the students, but the elementary school currently has a room available in the kindergarten wing that would be ideal for the purpose.
“Essentially it would be no cost to the district, and we would be able to provide the service here,” he said, noting the long-term direction of education is moving toward public pre-school programs.
“Down the road, I would like to start a preschool, because in my opinion, the earlier you get kids into school the better off they are — especially the ones in the lower socio-economic classes,” Mr. O’Donnell said.
He said he hopes to have a proposal ready for a board vote by April.
The superintendent also reported on the district’s expected performance on the Ohio Department of Education’s report card, the results of which are to be released in the near future.
The state bureaucracy has not released report card scores since 2014 when Indian Lake was rated as “Excellent with Distinction,” Mr. O’Donnell said. This year, however, the system has changed to a letter grade A, B, C, D or F.
Citing discrepancies in the way the state reports scores, he said Indian Lake is joining numerous districts statewide in performing self-evaluations based on the state standards that will be presented simultaneously with the state report.
“We are developing our own report card so the community can see our report compared to the state,” he told the board. “There are 612 public schools systems in the state and we’ll probably see 600 report cards.”
The elementary school continues to perform well on the standardized tests while middle school students tend to struggle with math and reading. New “end-of-course exams” for high school students have also been problematic, Mr. O’Donnell said.
The high school graduation rate and individual performance on the ACT test both continue to climb, which the superintendent said were tried and true measures of a district’s success.
In regular business, a new bleacher section will be installed in the mezzanine level of the high school gymnasium after the board accepted a $36,700 bid from Buckeye Bleacher Repair Inc.
The money used to pay for the bleachers comes from revenue from the sale of the former Lakeview Elementary School property, which netted the district $69,300.
The new bleachers will provide seating for 600 people and create a more attractive appearance for the upper level of the gymnasium when not in use and folded into their forward storage position, Mr. O’Donnell said.
Read complete story in Tuesday’s Examiner.
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