By JOHN BADEN
Record Herald Writer
Courtesy of the Record Herald; Printed 2.1.13
TIPP CITY – The Tipp City School District is moving forward with its upcoming school levy.
The school’s board of education passed a resolution Jan. 28 at its regular monthly meeting to proceed with putting a 4.93-mill, four-year emergency tax levy on the ballot for May 7.
The levy will generate $1,917,516 each year.
Superintendent Dr. John Kronour said that he and Treasurer Joseph Smith will be coming up with a new 5-year forecast with a “set two-fold plan” that will show what will happen if the levy passes or fails on the election date.
High school students at Tipp City will have the opportunity to get college credit through Urbana University without leaving the campus. The district is entering into a dual enrollment contract with the 123-year-old university, which will allow students to take college classes from teachers in their building, who are accredited through the college to teach Urbana’s 100 and 200-level courses that match up with ones that are taught at Tipp.
“We’ll be doing a workshop in the summer to really align and see that what we have in say a physics course would match up likely with their 200-level physics course and that their course standards are within ours,” Kronour said.
Besides the benefit of not having to leave the building, Kronour said that the education could be received at a reduced rate.
“The difference in price is quite significant,” Kronour said.
While a credit hour at Urbana University is around $445, a credit hour at Tipp through the university will be $75.
“There is some cost to the parents, but again we feel like this is a great opportunity and one we want to get rolling,” Kronour said.
Kronour said that the reason for choosing Urbana is because it’s not mutually exclusive, which means the school will have the freedom to do dual enrollment with other universities in the future.
“This was one we felt that we could get a number of our instructors certified in rather quickly and even offer classes next year,” Kronour said.
According to Kronour, Urbana is already working with 34 high schools in the area and has 399 dual enrollment students, which exceeds the number of PSEO students it has registered.
The district is contracting with Fidelity Healthcare, which is an in-home personalized care organization with a team of experienced nurses that help to progress healing and recovery.
“We’ve had such a problem with filling our nurses or nurses’ aide positions,” Kronour said. “We want to have Fidelity in place as a backup.”
While the school looks to fill the empty positions, Kronour puts full confidence in Fidelity, recognizing them as a “reputable firm” that is used by a number of schools in the area, including Northmont City Schools.
The fee schedule for the nurses is as follows: a) Skilled nurse visits for treatment and services – $90 per visit up to 2 hours of care;b) Skilled nurse for substitute school nurse, as needed – RN $34/hour, LPN $28/hour, 3 hour minimum; c) Skilled nurse for substitute school nurse, long-term – RN $32/hour, LPN $26/hour, 20 hour minimum, 40 hour maximum per week.
While there were no bullying incidents at Broadway, Nevin Coppock and L.T. Ball Intermediate in the school’s first semester report, there were five at the middle school and three at the high school.
According to Kronour, a couple suspensions and verbal warnings were issued, but the issues have been resolved.
“I’m not saying we don’t have bullying, but we are definitely doing everything we can to minimize that and make sure we’re working with our students who are experiencing that,” Kronour said.
While bullying has become a hot topic in the last year, Kronour believes that the numbers of incidents reported have not increased since the school started focusing on the situations three years ago.
“Typically, it seems to be more at the middle school and high school, and honestly it seems like a number of times these, especially at the high school, tend to revolve around boyfriend, girlfriend issues that kind of go south in a hurry,” Kronour said.
Kronour praised Tippecanoe High School Assistant Principal Brian Honeycutt and Tippecanoe Middle School Assistant Principal Shane Mead for their efforts in keeping the nationwide problem in check at Tipp and being there for the school’s students.
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