By Martha Jacob
Members of the Western Brown local Board of Education met in regular session Feb. 11.
Visitor Adam Bird attended the meeting and was first to speak to the board members.
Bird is a candidate for the Ohio House of Representative in District 66. Bird told the board that he has worked 32 years in education and the last 9 as superintendent of the New Richmond Exempted Village School District. He will retire this year.
“I would like to see our community continue to be represented in Columbus by conservatives like Doug Green, Tom Niehaus and Rose Vesper,” Bird told the board.
Kevin Kratzer, superintendent of Southern Hills Career and Technical Center in Georgetown also spoke to the board stressing that February is National JVS month. With Kratzer was Vicki Carrington director of post secondary.
The two briefly discussed the changes in graduation requirements and changes that will allow students to have some alternate options for graduating.
Marty Paeltz, principal at Mt. Orab Elementary and Georgia Sheldon, counselor, spoke to the board about PBIS (Positive Behavior Interventions).
“The PBIS program is very important at Western,” Jina Bohl, assistant superintendent said. “This program is based on being pro-active instead of re-active to issues.
“Most of the time when children are acting up it’s because they’ve always been taught and drilled on what Not to do, but never really taught what they should be doing. They are told don’t, don’t, don’t, but rarely told do, do, do.”
Bohl said that there is a PBIS team of 12 people made up of teachers, administration and counselors who plan on events for teachers daily events.
PBIS is a joint effort across the state.
In other business at the meeting the following actions were taken:
• accepted resignations from Sharon Minnie, bus driver and Lillian Cook resigned
• employed Zach Werne and volunteer assistant track coach, approved Tyler Spitznagel as volunteer assistant baseball coach
• employ Lillian Cook as long-term sub and HEMS 8th grade science teacher
• Wendy Halbert, Brooklyn O’Hara and Kimberly Ewing as cafeteria subs
• approved Heather Frye as volunteer assistant JV softball coach.
Under business portion of the meeting the board approved an overnight trip for WB FFA and the JROTC Rifle team to participate in Camp Perry.
Several other field trips were approved. The next board meeting is scheduled for March 18.
