Palmer new school board president

By Editor | May 8, 2013 |

Chris Palmer was elected president and Matt Hall was elected vice president of the Vandalia Board of Education at its reorganizational meeting on Monday.

Additionally, Joe Lawson was elected secretary and Molly Kirk was elected treasurer.
Also at the meeting, recently elected board members – incumbents Connie Goldsmith, Lawson and Palmer, as well as newcomer John Campbell – were administered the oath of office by Superintendent Rich Well.
The board then voted to adopt all existing policies, handbooks and administrative practices, and also voted to continue meeting on the third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m.
The 20-minute reorganizational meeting was then adjourned.
The board immediately reconvened, this time for its spring retreat.
That 2.5-hour meeting included discussions on a wide range of topics facing the board, but ended after 10 p.m. with the board taking no official action. At one point, the board closed the meeting for a 45-minute executive session to discuss personnel issues.
During the retreat, the board discussed the following:
• Vandalia Junior High School teacher Debbie Hobbie proposed the idea of creating a teacher-run Facebook page for the junior high, saying that it would be an effective way to communicate news and information to students and others in the community.
“There’s so much good that goes on in our school that the public doesn’t know about,” Hobbie said. She also noted that the Facebook page would be set up so that she would post items on it, and students wouldn’t be able to post items or make comments.
“Our school needs more positive publicity,” she said. “This is a simple way to do some bragging and let the public know about the great things that are going on here.”
Several board members spoke in favor of the page, but the board took no action on the proposal.
• Palmer proposed a school safety committee as a way to heighten the district’s awareness of safety issues.
“One of our main priorities is school safety,” he said, “and yet we don’t have a committee on that topic.”
Well concurred: “We have several people in town who get ongoing training in this area. It would be good to get people together and talk about things.”
• The board also discussed the “Affordable Care Act” (Obamacare), which mandates that every citizen should have some sort of health insurance, beginning in 2014. District business manager Lori Meseke made a presentation of the requirements that will be placed on employers to provide that insurance – and the penalties if they don’t.
• The board then recessed to an executive session to talk about the next item on its agenda – district transportation cuts, based on funding reductions from the state.
No action was taken when the board returned to open session.
• The final discussion topic for the retreat was possible cuts for the 2014-15 school year as a result of funding cuts by the Illinois General Assembly.
Well said that one change for the 2014-15 school year will be that he will take on the responsibilities of the Jefferson Primary School principal when Donna Cripe retires. Much of the other funding situations depend on actions taken by the General Assembly.
He said that 67 percent of the school districts in the state are running deficit budgets this year. He also noted that even though the Vandalia district still has a fund balance, those funds will be gone within 18 months if the General State Aid is reduced to 80 percent of is previous levels, as legislators are proposing.