Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
MEMBERS OF the Ironwood Area Schools Board of Education look over the agenda during a meeting Monday evening at Luther L. Wright School in Ironwood. Board members include, from left, Pamela Niemi, John Lorenson, Marilyn Nezworski (hidden), Ed Rickard, secretary Carolyn Mieloszyk and president Steve Thomas.
IRONWOOD - The Ironwood Area Schools Board of Education approved spending $21,000 on new playground equipment and installing old playground equipment during a meeting Monday.
According to superintendent Tim Kolesar, the funds will be come from the Great Start Readiness Program funding. He said the bid from Superior Play, of Brighton, will install new, age-appropriate equipment at Sleight School for the GSRP 4-year-old program, as well as install the old equipment from Sleight into the dust bowl at Luther L. Wright School.
"The installation will be certified through Superior Play," Kolesar said.
Personnel
The board approved hiring a new secretary for the middle-high school office after another employee put in her resignation, effective the end of October.
Questions were raised by member Leroy Johnson on how the offices were doing after another secretary resigned at the end of the last school year.
Johnson wondered how the duties were being handled with only four secretaries between the elementary and middle-high school offices.
Other board members discussed whether the board was beginning to "micro-manage the district," and how it should allow the administrators to handle any issues.
"We hired administrators and have them in place to do these duties," Pamela Niemi said. "We need to let them do those duties."
Kolesar said he has met with the secretaries "three or four times," to discuss the changes, and said things are going fine in the offices.
Also, the board discussed changing the pay of substitute bus drivers for out-of-town trips.
Kolesar suggested raising the pay from $11.05 an hour to $12.50 on out-of-town trips, and an additional $1 raise on "non-session days," such as Saturdays and Sundays.
"We just want to make sure we are compensating our drivers," Kolesar said.
Member Ed Rickard suggested paying the substitute drivers $13 an hour across the board, without special pay for non-session days. A motion was made and approved in favor of Rickard's suggestion of $13 an hour.
Other business
Member John Lorenson addressed the board on the issue of pay-to-play sports, specifically regarding equipment. Lorenson said that many sports house their equipment at LLW, and believes the pay-to-play sports should be no different.
"A lot of money is used to purchase that equipment, whether it be uniforms, gates for skiing, softball equipment, whatever," he said. "It should be stored here."
Member Marilyn Nezworski suggested maybe having an inventory taken of all the sports equipment, similar to what is being done with other items in the school, such as technology, desks and shelves.
A motion was approved to have all sports equipment stored at LLW, and an inventory be taken of all items for the schools records.
Before the meeting, board members honored their "citizens of the month," for the character trait of respect. Students receiving the honor included kindergartener Emma Branch, third grader Carmen Forstrom, eighth grader Taylor LaPlant and senior Jesse Carroll.
