Gilman board approves senior open campus

EMILY GOJMERAC

REPORTER

Perks of becoming a senior is something that students look forward to from day one when they walk into the school as a freshman.

The Gilman school district is rewarding seniors with the opportunity to receive open campus privileges if they meet certain criteria.

Walter Leipart, District Administrator, discussed certain stipulations that would allow students to be eligible for open campus.

Leipart said “Students must maintain a 2.75 grade point average, no single grade can be lower than a C. For example, if a student has all A’s and B’s in classes, but one D in a class, they would not be eligible for the open campus. Parents will be required to sign a permission form before their child will be allowed to leave campus during school hours.”

Board member, Valorie Kulesa brought up the fact that if the students are participating in sports, the students have to be accounted in school for a certain amount of time due to policy standards.

Liepart added, “The current athletic policy that is in place talks about two things which state that students have to arrive at their 3rd period class to get full-day accountability. With the open campus idea, the policy will be modified to students being allowed to arrive by their 4th period class to be given full-day accountability while still being able to participate in after school activities. The second part of this policy is that as a school board you have the ability to designate what qualifies as a whole day. So for these individuals that meet the criteria of having 24 credits before their 8th semester, by maintaining a 2.75 GPA and not failing any courses, they would meet the criteria for a modified schedule. Once the modified schedule has been identified, then the students will have been here for the whole day. That is permissible by state statute and recognized by the WIAA.”

Darrell Thompson asked, “Does that bring up the question of the amount of educational hours for the year?”

Leipart answered with “That is always something that you would want to review, we have met as a staff, and as a leadership team that you want to make sure that every student is successful in achieving a diploma. While we have some very talented individuals academically, we may have some students who struggle to do that. That’s why we haven’t made any recommendations of increasing credits at this time.”

Mike Gingras said “Even though the students are out of the building during school hours, they are still counted as regular school hours by the state. For example: If you look at Cornell, some of their students go to Chippewa Valley Technical College (CVTC), they are not in the school the whole day, they are only there part of the day, but they get counted as a whole day because that is how their educational program is set up.”

Bruce Ewings Sr. asked his fellow board members “Are the students only allowed to come in late, instead of leaving early?”

Leipart said “At this time that is how we are going to do it, yes. The topic came up of how this would impact students who are in sports, for example if they were to leave at 5th hour and then come back for sports at the end of the day. This open campus opportunity is open for all students who meet the grade criteria, so you don’t have to be in sports, and you don’t have to be college bound. We could have students that have 24 credits and not have a single college class, and we would allow them to also have those first three hours off as well. It was discussed that we would start with coming in late, and then if we have a student that wants to come in 1st through 6th hour and have the last two hours off, we could look into that.”

Ewings Sr. suggested that “That’s what I was thinking if you had a student that wanted to start a part-time job at the cheese factory, could that be possible for them?”

Liepart said “We are open to that, and I thought that we should start with this proposal, and address those as they come.”

Thompson asked “How is a student supposed to follow the school’s code of conduct when they are out of the building?”

Liepart answered “A lot of the students are good role models and if they abuse this privilege, then it will be taken away from them.”

Leipart changed the wording of the policy to say “All student code of conduct rules apply to all students when they are off campus, during their release hours.”

Parent, Emily Gunderson approached the board by saying “Senior privileges are something the students looked forward to, and there is that goal to maintain their grades and attendance. Within the last two years, we have had students who are home with their CVTC classes, or they are finishing this online at home. The question is are they really working on classes or are they not? Now we come back to pre-COVID-19, and you can set next year’s and the year after at a baseline again. If these students are going to school for something, or not going to school, just cause they had the morning or afternoon off, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are just sitting at home, or sleeping in. Here is an opportunity to say ‘Madisyn is going to school for nursing, she can go do a job shadow at Stanley or Medford Hospital versus getting the one hour off at the end of the day, and then they drive a half an hour to wherever they have to go, be at the job site for an hour, and then drive back. I do a shadow program at the dental office in Medford. We have a student that comes there for 2 hours every day for the entire semester. She gets graded on how she represents herself, etc, and so that goes toward her credit as a class. Our students don’t have as many opportunities because we live so far away. So by doing this now, and setting the precedent for future students, might give them incentive to want to venture out and learn more, rather than staying in Gilman. I think it is a really good program that isn’t just rewarding current students, but future students as well.”

Senior, Madisyn James gave her opinion of why open campus would be beneficial to her and her fellow seniors. James said “I am only taking college courses because I have completed all my required classes to graduate within the last three years. I am taking a total of 3 college courses, and to fill up my schedule I am also taking elective courses. I feel that the open campus option would be beneficial to me so instead of taking an Art course, for example, I could use that time to work on my college courses that are more geared toward my career.”

Senior open campus program as presented to be monitored by administrative guidelines was passed by the board.

Schedule changes

Bell schedule will be changed from starting the school day at 8:15 a.m., to starting the day at 8:10 a.m. With doing this, this will eliminate a day, but with those 5 minutes earlier everyday, it will be gained back.

The school day will be going back to an 8 period day starting in the fall of 2022. The 7 period day, with one flex period didn’t work out as well as it had been predicted. The middle school students had a hard time fitting band into their schedules with the 7 period day. So the school will be reverting back to their 7 classes/day with a study hall. With gaining the 5 minutes a day, the class periods will be 45 minutes long.

Leipart added “We also found that the middle school students, during the middle of the day, have to burn off some some energy, so we figured we could give them their lunch period and then some free time afterwards for the rest of the hour. It also serves as a way to give them something, so if we have behavioral issues during the school day and a student gets a detention, now it has meaning because they are going to miss out on free time to play in the gym, etc.”

Baseball changes

The varsity Gilman baseball team is cancelled for this spring. There will be a junior varsity co-op with Cornell and Lake Holcombe. Seven of the students will be from Gilman, and 3 of them will be from Cornell and Lake Holcombe. This co-op will only be for this baseball season, due to the fact that there are a lot more interested students in the 8th grade coming into high school next year. Gilman will be the host school. WIAA stipulations are not required for a JV team.

The wrestling co-op between Cornell and Lake Holcombe will continue as usual.

In other business:

_ Abby Krug has been chosen for the Class of 2022 Valedictorian.

_ Hannah Vick has been chosen for the Class of 2022 Salutatorian.

_ All teacher mid-year reviews are completed.

_ Shop air compressor broke down and a new one has been installed.

_ The tiles in the cafeteria are bubbling up about three inches, this is a problem that happens every three years, but it is in the middle of the cafeteria, there is a surface crack underneath that tile.

_ Second Friday count totaled 340 students in the district, with 286 students in the building and the other 80 students completing their work on E-succeed.

_ The Engel’s scholarship will be established this year. Eleven students are said to apply. The amount of the scholarship is $1,000/applicant.

_ The town of Taft Scholarship will be available to all seniors this year. It is 2-$500 scholarships, and will only be available for this year.

_ The CESA contract has been set for the 2022-2023 school year has been set at $285,670.

_ Copier/printer lease has been approved for 5 years at a rate of $14,391/year. This is $500 less than they are currently spending.

_ After executive session, the board re-entered open session and authorized the sale of school parcels 042-00285-0000 and 042-00286-0000 in the Township of Taft to Sam Goettl for the amount of $87,000 with buyer to pay closing costs. This action was approved on a 5 yes 1 no roll call vote.