MENTONE – Tippecanoe Valley School Board got updates on the high school facilities project and the 2022 state assessment results for grades three to 11.
On April 12, Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation received 15 bids for 10 bid categories for the Tippecanoe Valley High School renovations and addition project. In a special meeting April 15, the Board rejected all bids.
Monday, Scott Rogers, project manager with Skillman Corporation, said last week Skillman Corporation sent construction documents to bidders again. Every day, the company is getting questions and interest from contractors interested in the project. On Sept. 27, contractors will have a walk-through of TVHS where they can ask questions.
Bids will be opened Oct. 11. A recommendation will be made to the Board during its October meeting.
Construction is now planned to start in April 2023, he said, with the auditorium, pool addition and the athletic area with the weight room and locker rooms.
The alternates for the project – the athletic gym addition and renovation – will not be started until June 2023.
The agriculture additions will start in January 2024.
Inga Omondi, instructional coach, updated the Board on the corporation’s 2022 state assessment results.
For the iREAD, 117 students, or 83.5%, passed on the first attempt, which included 13 perfect scores. Twenty-three students did not pass on the first attempt. Nine students passed on the second attempt. Ten students didn’t pass on the second attempt.
Superintendent Blaine Conley said in 2021 the school corporation had 79% of its students pass the iRead on their first attempt.
For the SAT taken in March, the mean score was 945. The mean score for the reading test, the writing and language test was 479 and the mean math score 466.
The PSAT, taken in fall 2021, saw a mean total score of 898. The mean score for the reading, writing and language test was 447. The mean math score was 450.
TVHS Principal Brandon Kresca informed the Board about employability skills grading.
He said the Indiana Department of Education released updated employability standards. The department has come out with standards for ninth through 12th grades for “soft skills,” which is “the idea we teach character ed and teach character and try to grow students at high-school level to go out in the world and be productive citizens.”
Kresca said the high school is in the process of working with a teacher committee and getting input from the community about which standards the school should be focusing, and ultimately assessing the students, on.
Omondi helped the high school to create a report card that would include the employability standards and give feedback to standards quarterly. Kresca said the high school is not doing it for the first quarter and plans on doing it for the second quarter this year.
Kresca said the high school wants to get the standards in front of parents and to get a final standards.
The Board also had a budget hearing for its 2023 proposed budget.
The proposed budget totals $26,118,125. Of the total, the debt service fund is $3,839,232, the education fund is $13,158,529 and the operations fund is $9,120,364.
The adoption date for the budget is Oct. 10.
In other business, the Board approved:
• A $2,500 anonymous donation to Burket Education Center by a TVHS graduate.
• A $100,000 Indiana Secured School Safety Grant. The grant is through the Indiana Department of Homeland Security. Conley said TVSC was one of 70 of the 425 schools districts in the state that was eligible. TVSC was awarded the maximum grant award and is the fifth year in a row the school corporation has been awarded the maximum.
