Unit 40 Board Sets End of Year Dates

The Effingham Unit 40 Board of Education Monday set end-of-year dates for this school year and also approved a calendar for the 2018-19 school year.

Final exams this year are scheduled on May 16 and 17. The last day for students will be a morning session on May 18, with the afternoon to be a Staff Improvement Day.

Effingham High School graduation will take place on Sunday, May 20 at 2pm. A Teacher Institute will be held on May 21 to wrap up the year.

As for the 2018-19 school year, things will begin with a Teacher's Institute on Wednesday, August 15, followed by partial student attendance days on Thursday and Friday, August 16 and 17. The first full day of student attendance will be on Monday, August 20.

Also Monday, the Unit 40 Board approved an agreement with the Regional Office of Education for alternative education programs for the 2018-19 school year, approved a light efficiency project for the bus garage, approved a five-year billboard contract with Lamar Advertising for the billboards on Unit 40-owned property west of the high school complex near the interstate, and approved a five-year lease agreement for a mail machine with Pitney-Bowes.

In personnel action, Unit 40 board members transferred speech pathologist Aron Spicer to South Side School, and hired Erica Schumacher as a speech pathologist for work at both the junior high and high school buildings. Resignations were accepted from Shannen Helm as a teacher as of the end of the school year, Kelsey Weber as a mentoring facilitator at the high school as of the end of the school year, and from Linda Wielgus as a cafeteria monitor at Central School.