Unit 40 Board Updates Safe Return to School Plan; Votes to Move Ahead w/East Side Parking Lot Project (ADDING PERSONNEL MOVES)

Effingham Unit 40 school board members reviewed possible changes in the district's Safe Return to In-Person Instruction and Continuity of Services plan.

Superintendent Andy Johnson proposed a streamlining of the district's current seven-page document to a two-page document. The proposed measure would continue to make masks strictly optional. Unit 40 Board President Robin Klosterman said her review of the two-page proposal indicates that it is "totally consistent with what the State recommends." The Board adopted the revised guideline.

There was more discussion of how to move ahead with planning for the future of the district. Johnson said he had looked for additional firms to assist with the planning, but said, "I'm not finding a lot". Board members indicated that Educational Leadership Solutions, the firm that helped with the search that resulted in hiring Johnson as superintendent, might be the way to go. No one had negatives about the firm, other than the price tag for the work.

Johnson said he knows of retired superintendents who assist districts in planning for the future, and said he could perhaps do such work, but then the district runs the risk of his being accused of steering the work in a certain direction. Nothing was finalized at Thursday's meeting on the issue.

The Board did vote to hire Effingham Asphalt to do work to guarantee a good foundation for a parking lot west of the East Side Pre-School building. Assistant Superintendent Jason Fox said the area "is a swamp". Further exploration of the ground found that in a previous life it had been filled up with trees and with foundations from houses that had been located there before the school building was built in the 1950s. 

The parking lot is being pursued to eliminate on-street parking especially on the south side of the school building. Fox said the project price was $170,000. The cost to put the ground back together would be $40,000, while the cost to haul off the unsuitable materials and instead put in a solid foundation on which the parking lot could be built would be $112,000. The Board voted to hire Effingham Asphalt to prepare and fill the area to provide a good base, and then to build the parking lot.

In personnel moves, the Unit 40 Board hired Donna Gadd and Glynnis Leftwich as cafeteria monitors at South Side School, hired Stephanie Ruholl as a paraprofessional, hired Lana Adams as a mid-day bus aide, hired Erin Hardiek as a speech language pathologist, hired Rachel Lanham as a long term substitute for the coming school year, and hired Heather Britton and Jacqueline Jones as three-hour food service personnel. The Board also approved the transfer of Lorrie Siler as four-hour food service personnel at the junior high school, and accepted resignations from Vickie Darling and Brenda Myers as food service personnel.