When the Hamilton Southeastern Schools received a large grant from the Lilly Foundation to look at different ways of counseling students, the school district hired Freedom Kolb from her post heading-up the local schools foundation to help oversee how the grant would be carried-out.
Wednesday night, Kolb went before the local school board and reviewed where the process stands now. The program Guiding All Kids (GAK) looked at what needs to be done, tapping everyone from the top school officials to citizens drawn from the community, serving on teams brainstorming ideas.
Some of the general ideas include having students participate in community service projects and reducing student stress.
Some grade-specific ideas include:
—Elementary: Respect people who are different than they are.
—Intermediate: Participate in sport, club, or activity.
—Junior High: Have academic goals for the coming school year.
—High School: Participate in job shadowing or internship.
The GAK program is part of the Indiana Department of Education’s Gold Star Certification process.
In other actions taken at the Wendesday Hamilton Southeastern School Board session:
–Board members approved the Discovery Education Science TechBook, for grades K-6 as a replacement to our current resource, Fusion Science.
–The turf for the football fields at both high schools will be replaced, beginning when school ends, with the goal of having both fields completed by early August.
–The Board approved matching funds to install playground equipment at Durbin Elementary. Durbin parents raised funds that will be matched by the school corporation. This is the first use of money gained from the sale of land at 131st and Cumberland Road. Those funds have been set aside by the board to match fund-raising by school PTOs for projects such as playgrounds.
–The board gave first reading approval to some minor changes in school policies. The final vote on those changes will come at a June board meeting.
The board has no scheduled public meetings for the remainder of the month of May. There is one executive session scheduled later this month.
School Superintendent Allen Bourff expects several issues to come before board members during the next public session, June 13th, including the KSM contract for data management and the Community Health proposed contract for nursing services.
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