Ebrg Schools looking at altered schedule
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EDINBURG — The Edinburg Board of Education held a regular meeting on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. in the district Media Center.
School Principal Ashley Francis made some suggestions to the Board about altering the schools’ master schedule. These proposed changes were done to further the education of the children, allow for more convenient schedules, and improve building usage. Francis suggested that the 6-12 students have two scheduled lunches instead of three, so the elementary students would also be able to have lunch at 11:15 instead of earlier. She also suggested the 6-12 grades have a study hall at the end of the day to hopefully encourage teachers to get back into the habit of assigning more homework now that students are fully in-person again.
There was also the possibility of moving to seven class periods instead of eight. Francis said this would give teachers a little more time with the students in class. The Advisory period would also be moved to the middle of the day instead of at the end of the day under the new proposed schedule. Francis said this would allow students who left the building in the afternoon time to attend club meetings and hopefully increase club membership. She also through that the student council and club sponsors could use the time to met without having to schedule things at the end of the day or after school.
The final large change would be changing the credit requirements from 26 to 25. Francis explained that with new english and math teachers coming into the district and greatly diversifying the class offerings, she wanted to give as many students as possible to take advantage of those classes by allowing the teachers to combine some classes that logically made sense to be together – like Speech with English and so on. She also explained two of the more interesting classes that would be coming soon to Edinburg: American Sign Language (ASL) and Transitional Math.
The ASL class would count towards a foreign language class, and Francis explained the district should be looking to the future to make sure they had a foreign language offered. In the 2028-2029 school year, the State of Illinois was going to make having a foreign language mandatory for high school graduation. Francis believed that having a strong ASL class program in the school would make fulfilling that requirement easier on the district.
The Transitional Math class would be an offering for college-bound students who had already met their three math class credit requirements. The class would be a more hands on and problem solving class that would, through accreditation through Lincoln Land Community College, take the place of some math pre-requisites at the college level. The class could also serve as a way of getting out of the required college math testing.
The Board appeared excited about these possible changes, but since the Handbook would have to be changed to accommodate them, no action was taken on them at the meeting.
The Our School website and scheduling system was getting ready for the upcoming school year. The sporting schedules were being uploaded into the system so that reminders could be sent out to student athletes, parents, and referees about upcoming game days. Superintendent Ben Theilen said he was still working on a color scheme that would represent not only Edinburg, but also South Fork, whom the district is in a sports cooperative with.
Theilen also said he was looking into replacing the problematic propane bus in the school fleet. He was also thinking about purchasing another activity bus or an eight passenger van. He told the Board he would work on getting estimates to them as soon as he could.
He also explained that while the asbestos abatement was going well on the flooring projects, there was a small snafu in the plans. The company which made the tiles used in the flooring either went out of business or was on the path of going out of business. This has made the cost of the flooring tiles go up 3 times over what they were originally. Theilen said he was looking into what the district had in stock already, but also added that he did not expect to get the cafeteria flooring project finished before school started.
He did suggest the Board look at rolled vinyl as a possible substitute for tiles. The flooring did not require yearly waxing and was durable. He planned on looking into the general cost of the flooring for the Board to look at in the July meeting.
The next regular meeting of the Edinburg Board of Education will be held on Wednesday, July 13, 2022, at 6:00 p.m. in the district Media Center.
