Warsaw Schools To Consider WCHS Classroom Renovations

(photo supplied / Warsaw Community Schools)

At Monday’s regular meeting, Warsaw School Board will consider moving forward with renovating classrooms at Warsaw Community High School.

April Fitterling, WCS chief financial officer, said at Tuesday’s public work session that it will be phase one of a multi-phase renovation of the high school. Thirty-three classrooms will be renovated, which is approximately one-third of the classrooms at the high school.

Along with the renovations, the school board will look at giving permission to do some panel replacement at Warsaw Area Career Center. Jim LeMasters, director of maintenance, buildings and grounds, was able to get the cost down to $2,500 for the paneling, Fitterling said.

Also during Tuesday’s meeting, the school board learned about some things that are going to be changed during the summer school program for 2020.

There has been an uptick in schools in Indiana offering summer school, said WCS Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert. “While that pot of money (from the state) has increased, there are more parties drawing from that,” he said.

Last year, summer school was funded at 81%, said Hoffert. The changes this year will be done to save money.

The changes were made to cut costs but not impact student learning, said JoElla Hauselman, summer program coordinator.

Hauselman said the summer program last year reduced the school day for high school students to four hours by removing all breaks, meal times and minutes not directly related to instruction. High school students were moved to Edgewood Middle School due to cooling issues at the high school, which saved the school district $30,000.

For summer school this year, Hauselman said the four-hour day and being located at Edgewood for high schoolers will be continued.

Biology will be offered through Indiana Online Academy as a pilot. The course will be offered as individual study from home from June 8 to 23. The exams the students will have to take will be proctored at the summer school site, Hauselman said.

Hoffert said this program will be run through the school.

“This is just a different delivery method and (the students) never leave our accounts,” he said.

Another change that will be made will be to reduce summer physical education to two sections each session.

For kindergarten through seventh grade, the length of the day will be cut by one hour. A schedule has been built and Hauselman said she doesn’t believe the reduction will reduce the integrity of the programs.

Also, the summer school program will increase the cost for science, technology, engineering and math and Defense Language Institute enrichment programs from $50 to $150 per student for three weeks. Scholarships will be available through the Warsaw Education Foundation for those that need it.

WCS will save $112,960 from the changes and will add at least $9,400 in revenue from the increase of enrichment for STEM and DLI, for a total impact of $122,360.