Discuss enrollment, building changes
The Illinois Valley Central District 321 school board discussed the start of the school year, with the focus of looking forward at its Aug. 10 meeting.
Superintendent Dr. Nick Polyak discussed the closing of many construction projects this summer, including Mossville Junior High’s gym replacement and roof re-coating, as well as IVC High School’s door replacement and repairs.
“The safety work that is going to be finished up this week are the fire alarm systems at CEC and the high school,” Polyak said. “The other thing that’s going to wrap up is the roof replacement on the front of Mossville and our guys are just about done installing the new playground on the south side at South School.”
The construction may almost be completed, but the registration numbers for each of the schools will be up in the air until the first day of school.
As of now, South School is at 388 and CEC is at 407 students. Mossville is just shy of 700, while IVCHS is at about 750.
The total district number is estimated to be around 2,235 students for the 2010-11 school year.
The school board also discussed implementing a strategic plan, involving the community in the drafting process.
“We are in the process of drafting a schedule. I believe the first step is going to be finding community members who would like to participate. Once we get that core group, we’ll start meeting with an independent person to help us begin forming committees and sub-committees to start the strategic planning,” board member Nell German said.
“The school board last year agreed that we wanted to try to implement strategic planning in particular in light of the financial issues to make sure that we and the community are all looking forward to go with the direction of the school district,” she said.
German said they hope to have the strategic plan accomplished within the academic year.
In other action and discussion, the board:
• approved the applications for occupancy at Mossville and IVCHS
• approved the high school athletic conference switch, which puts them in the Mid-State 6 conference for football only, which will take effect in the 2011-12 school year.
“I think we all recognize that this is going to raise the level of competition, especially with some of the realignments with Peoria schools, but we also discussed that our student athletes are going to be able to rise to the challenge,” school board president Jim Hollenback said.
• approved personnel contracts for Julie Gleason, South School special education teacher; Carli Jones, CEC social worker; and Jessica Bokelman, South School first grade teacher.
