On March 4, the School Board held their bimonthly meeting at 7 p.m and discussed a number of topics during the hour. Some items on the agenda included legislative updates, adjustments to school boundaries and construction at Bibich Elementary School.
“Senate Bill One is what they’re calling literacy and many educators are referring to as a retention bill. Not just Lake Central, but educators across the state agree that mastering reading is a worthy top priority for students in Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades. We do embrace identifying struggling readers. We embrace designing intentional interventions to shore up deficiencies, but we do not believe, in Becky’s [Gromala, Director of Student Services] words, that retention is an effective intervention. We have serious concerns with the black and white exceptions to this retention policy,” Dr. Larry Veracco, Superintendent, said.
Next, he talked about some of the actions Lake Central is taking with intentional intervention.
“The standard talking points from the Bill’s Author, Senator Rogers and many other elected officials, including Dr. Jenner, continues to say that something needs to be done. We agree something needs to be done. We like the components of this legislation regarding the intentional intervention,” Dr. Veracco said.
Then, he discussed what will happen in the next couple years regarding school boundaries in the tri-town area.
“The one neighborhood I’ve told a couple people looks like the easiest one to move would be the Castlewood area. If you look at our Elementary boundary on our website, it’s the only neighborhood south of 30 in Dyer that goes to Prostman. By moving that to Bibich, we take some pressure off of Prostman. The students still go to their same middle school. That’s what makes it an easy transfer, an easy change. We need to not only monitor the impact of moving students on the elementary schools, but the corresponding impact on when they go to a different middle school as well,” Dr. Veracco said.
Another key point in the meeting was the explanation about the improvements made to Bibich Elementary School recently.
“Thank you to Alison [Petrailia, Bibich Principal], Ashley [Mitsch, Bibich, Assistant Principal] and Becky [Gromala, Director of Student Services] who spent several days and hours going over the furniture needs for Bibich. Rob [James, Director of Business Services] and I put together the budget. We tried to have a budget to replace a lot of the furniture in the existing building as well because I’ve been told by numerous teachers and some of the principals over there it is older than I am which I know is not true, but it is kind of old,” Bill Ledyard, Director of Facilities, said.
