Greenfield honors former board member
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By Carmen Ensinger
Submitted photo
Former Greenfield School Board President Rodney Knittel holds the plaque he was presented with at the September board meeting by the board for his many years of service on the school board. Knittel resigned his position on the board after moving out of the district.
Greenfield School Board members honored their former board president at their October meeting by presenting him with a plaque before seating his replacement.
Rodney Knittel, longtime board member, resigned at the August meeting after moving out of the district. He was presented with a special plaque for his many years of dedication of service to the school board.
A special meeting was called on Sept. 8 to interview candidates to fill his seat. At the end of the meeting, Kate Garner was chosen to fill his seat. A special budget hearing was held prior to the regular board meeting. Garner took the oath of office and was sworn in at the regular meeting.
Greenfield Superintendent Kevin Bowman went over the Administrative Strategic Targets with the board.
“There were only two new additions this year,” he said. “One was to keep the school going during the COVID crisis and the other one was to continue the one-to-one program now that we are able to get things going with our one-to-one computing.”
In the facilities report, Bowman updated the board on the use of the ESSER II and III funds the district has received.
“With these funds, we are trying to include HVAC for our elementary cafeteria and the elementary gym and then, hopefully, the high school gym will get HVAC added as well,” he said. “We are still working on getting those installed.”
Currently, the only air conditioning in the elementary and high school is by individual air conditioning units in each classroom. The larger areas, like the cafeteria and gym in the elementary school and the high school gym are not air conditioned.
“It would be nice to have those areas air conditioned,” Bowman said. “But that is a kind of a pretty big purchase and we are not sure what that is going to end up costing us so we have our architect working on that.
Greenfield received around $940,000 in ESSAR III funds, but 20 percent of that amount, or $188,000, must be allotted for learning loss.
“They have said that we have to use 20 percent of it for such things as after school programs and summer school programs or anything to do with learning loss,” Bowman said. “It is nice that we have funds to address those issues now because it has been a long time since we have had funds to do that.”
Another area Bowman plans to use some of those funds for is new textbooks.
“There hasn’t been a textbook loan program since I became a superintendent or before I went into administration,” he said. “So that has been a long time. Now, we can use some of those dollars to update our textbooks that haven’t been updated since 1995 or something like that. We might not get a chance for something like this in a long time again.”
The board approved an intergovernmental agreement with Northwestern that will allow Bowman to be a shared superintendent between the two district for an additional three years. By sharing the superintendent, the districts also share his salary, thereby saving both districts money.
Board Secretary Becky McClellan announced here retirement, effective in January. McClelland has been with the district for at least 15 years. Ruth Cole, currently elementary secretary, will move up to her position as board secretary upon her retirement.
With this in mind, the district posted for the position of elementary secretary to replace Cole in January.
The board approved the three-year-notice of retirement for Janice Meyer and also approved moving the school nurse to the certified pay scale as well as hired April Edwards as a teacher aide.
