“We have and are proud to have to lowest cafeteria prices for our students in the entire area,” stated Klitzman. “A meal is $1.50. The federal reimbursement is more than that so we need to increase our prices, per federal mandate, to $1.60.”
The board did approve that increase.
A sharply divided Eastern Pulaski School Board accepted veteran superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman’s retirement request during a crowded special-called meeting last evening. Last week Klitzman announced his intention to retire after 26 years with the corporation, citing the “shaky” 4-3 vote to extend his contract an extra year. School board newcomer Deke DeMarco cast the tiebreaking vote in favor of the contract extension after a lengthy and apparently contentious executive session last week. He also cast the swing vote in favor of accepting Klitzman’s retirement request. Fellow newcomers Rhonda Heims and Terri Johnston and longtime Klitzman critic Joe Cunningham also voted to accept. Veteran board members and Klitzman supporters Larry Beach, John Kwiatkowski and Mike Tetzloff cast their votes in opposition of accepting Klitzman’s retirement and criticized the new board members for their knee-jerk reactions. Several teachers and community members spoke in support of Klitzman. They noted that the school system is among the best in the area both academically and financially and questioned what the board members hoped to gain by going in a new direction. Klitzman will remain on the job until his contract runs out at the end of June.
The Eastern Pulaski School Board members welcomed seven special guests to their meeting on Monday morning. Kindergarten students read a short story to each of the school board members to begin the presentation part of the school board meeting.
Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman emphasized that the students have come a long way from the beginning of the school year in their reading abilities and wanted to share that progress with the board. President Michael Tetzloff commented that the teachers and the kids are doing a great job and it was a highlight of the meeting.
Eastern Pulaski School Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman updated the school board on this bill during their recent meeting.
Students at Eastern Pulaski Schools are going above and beyond their studies – way beyond. As part of Avicenna Academy in Lake County’s Indiana State Science Education Consortium, Eastern Pulaski students in grades 5-8 will be participating in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Programs designed to utilize student’s information gained in the classroom and expand upon it through further research and investigation.
During the recent meeting of the Eastern Pulaski School Board, Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman brought several pieces of legislation to the attention of the board members that are education-related. The bill that he is most concerned deals with school vouchers.
Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman commented that the Junior Science and Humanities Class, or AP Biology, will be going to a symposium at Saint Mary’s of the Woods in Terre Haute.
“We need to do this to understand that our teachers are the most important ingredient in student learning and the iPad and everything else supplements that teacher,” stated Dr. Klitzman. “We’re gradually infusing more of the technology into our programming. Mr. Dickinson reported on how we’re doing with that at the middle school.”
The iPads will be put into more students’ hands as the year goes forward.
As the nation recovers from the unbelievable tragedy that rocked the town of Newtown, Conn., schools around our area have been taking extra precautions and conducting drills to ensure they know how to respond if the unthinkable were to occur.
At Culver Community Schools, students at the elementary school coincidentally conducted a lockdown drill the day before the Newtown tragedy occurred. After the tragedy, Superintendent Brad Schuldt said the middle school and high school conducted their lockdown drills, which is something the schools do annually.
The Eastern Pulaski School Corporation is currently investigating a fraudulent bomb threat made at the school on Wednesday, Oct. 10. Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman explained that they had been alerted by a student that a threat had been written in one of the stalls in the high school girls’ restroom indicating that a bomb was in the school and would go off at a specific time.
As schools throughout the country migrate from the rapidly-antiquating textbooks, chalkboards, and other teaching tools, the Eastern Pulaski School Corporation is following the same path, but Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman said his corporation is going about it a bit different.
Klitzman explained that the corporation will be slowly phasing in the new technology, as opposed to dropping new technology on the heads of teachers and students at the beginning of the school year. He said they will be systematically adding new devices throughout the year, and they’ve already started this school year with iPads in the hands of 7th graders working in science. On top of that, Klitzman noted they also have several handheld devices that go beyond iPads, such as notebooks, netbooks, and other devices, in several advanced high school classes.
The Average Daily Membership, or ADM counts, were conducted throughout the state for all school corporations last Friday. Schools rely on this count as corporations receive funding for every student counted on that day.
Eastern Pulaski School Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman said that his corporation is down approximately 30 students. That amounts to a loss of $150,000 in funding for the school. Dr. Klitzman said this year’s count was 1,190.
The Eastern Pulaski School Board accepted four donations to the corporation that were made by the community. Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman says the program that received monetary donations was that of Helping Hands.
“It’s designed to help students who have a need in the area of textbook rental and also for their lunch program and breakfast program,” explained Dr. Klitzman. “Our community donates money anonymously and as students have this need, we go ahead and provide the funding for that and let the parents know that this was provided by our Helping Hands Program.”
More than $500 was donated toward that fund to help students with their needs at school.
The Eastern Pulaski School Board approved the textbook adoption committee for two elementary subjects. Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman said a group of educators and parents will choose the material.
“The curricular area that we’ll study leading to adoption is in the area of reading and handwriting,” commented Klitzman. “For those who have followed our data, we have had exceptionally good data in the area of reading so we’re going to be hard-pressed to come up with new materials that will help us do a better job.”
There will be no school for students at the Eastern Pulaski School Corporation on Monday, Sept. 24. That day has been set aside for parent/teacher conferences and professional development opportunities.
Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman explained that it will be a full day of conferences at the elementary school, but only a half day of conferences at the middle school and high school.
The Eastern Pulaski School Board approved some changes to its school board policy manual which Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman says are the direct result of state statutes.
“It was put into a statute that superintendents must be evaluated every year which was a shock to me because at Eastern Pulaski, for the last 25+ years I’ve been here, there’s been an evaluation every year, but evidently some places choose not to. We modified our school board policy to make sure we were in compliance with Indiana statutes,” commented Klitzman.
Although the Average Daily Membership, or ADM count, isn’t officially taken until Friday, West Central School Superintendent Charles Mellon discussed the preliminary enrollment for this year with the board last week.
“We like to keep track of that because the number of students equals the amount of money we receive from the state,” said Mellon. “As far as the number of students we have currently, it’s identical to last year. Some of these people are migrant students that will not be with us all year and they may not be with us on Sept. 14, but they are in the count at the current time.”
The Eastern Pulaski School Corporation is now the owner of the abandoned state highway property that the corporation has been leasing from the Indiana Department of Transportation as a bus garage.
Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman made the announcement at the recent school board meeting.
“I’ve gone back to 1984 and found correspondence with INDOT stating that we could secure that property,” explained Dr. Klitzman.
The Eastern Pulaski School Corporation recently received two donations. Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman said the North-Central Co-op donated $840 to the elementary school, specifically for classroom supplies for the teachers.
“They just decided it was a project they wanted to do,” explained Klitzman. “Mrs. Collins [Principal of the Elementary School] did go down to their facility to accept the donation and asked them if they had children in our school corporation and no one did. They just wanted to do it to help us.”
The Eastern Pulaski School Corporation’s maintenance staff is working hard on quite a few projects this summer, and Superintendent Dr. Robert Klitzman explained that the majority of these changes include digital upgrades.
“We’re continuing our project at the middle school and high school of changing the HVAC controls from pneumatic to digital,” explained Klitzman. “We are in the process of hanging all of the projectors in every classroom at the elementary level. They will be able to hook them up to their computers and basically bring the world into their classroom via the internet and help with student learning in that case.”
The regular deep-cleaning is also underway to get the classrooms and all of the school facilities ready for the start of another school year in August.
