MENTONE - For the most part, the number of students attending summer school at Tippecanoe Valley School Corp. is up.
The summer lunch program also served almost 10,000 lunches during the summer.
Curriculum Director Angie Miller gave the school board a short update Monday night on the 2009 summer school session.During the 2009 summer school, Valley offered 36 classes, up from 28 in 2008. There were 30 teachers and 11 assistants employed to teach the classes. There were two sessions of summer school.
In the first session, there were eight classes offered at Tippecanoe Valley High School. While 159 students signed up, 147 attended.
Only three classes were offered at Tippecanoe Valley Middle School. There were 46 students who attended, but 54 students signed up.
At Akron Elementary, 86 students signed up, with 70 actually attending; Mentone Elementary had 64 students signed up with 49 attending.
During the second session, TVHS offered five classes, with 75 students signing up and 72 students attending. The middle school offered four classes, with 73 signing up and 65 attending. At Akron, 87 students signed up for the five classes, but 75 students attended. Mentone offered four classes, with 79 students signing up and 66 attending.
In total, 677 students signed up for at least one of the 36 classes, with 590 students attending in 2009. In the previous year, 2008, a total of 468 students signed up for summer school, with 415 students attending.
"Eighty-seven percent of students that enrolled in summer school participated," said Miller. The average summer school class size was 16 students, but would have been 19 had all the students who signed up actually attended.
At the end of June, 106 students were tested to measure their reading levels at the end of the program. Of the students tested, 81 percent held or raised their spring 2009 reading score.
With summer school, Valley also offered summer transportation.
Buses traveled two routes all 45 days of summer school. TVSC hired two drivers that drove one route in the northern part of the corporation and one route in the southern part. Buses each picked up students at six locations in the school corporation.
During session one, 312 students attended summer school and an average of 71 students per day rode buses. During session two, 278 students attended summer school and an average of 42 students per day rode buses.
Superintendent Brett Boggs said there were 9,529 lunches served during the summer as part of the summer lunch program. Lunches were served at three sites for any child up to 18 years old. They had to eat the lunch on site.
This was the first year Valley participated in the summer lunch program.
In other business, the school board:
n Approved spending $1,500 for a feasibility study for a possible wind turbine project at the Tippecanoe Valley High School and Middle School campus.
Performance Services Inc. will conduct the study.
Valley is seeking stimulus dollars for a Guaranteed Energy Savings Project and a wind turbine at the campus. The study will help Valley determine whether or not to go forward with the wind turbine. Both of the projects, if they move forward, will focus on powering the campus with clean energy, lower energy costs and provide educational opportunities for students.
n Heard the Guaranteed Energy Savings Project at Burket Educational Center is nearing completion. The air conditioning was turned on Wednesday, and students have been in the building since Friday.
"Overall, I think we're in excellent shape," said Alan Stewart, of A. Hattersley & Sons.
Boggs said that two weeks ago, a man from Indianapolis and a representative from REMC contacted Valley about the Burket project being featured as part of an article for Electric Consumer magazine. The article will be about what schools are doing to save energy.
n Approved the resignations of Tiffani Flora, special education preschool teacher, Mentone; and Jennifer Phillips, special education teacher, TVHS.
n Approved an amendment to the corporation's 403(b) plan.
n Approved teaching staff for the 2009-10 school year.
n Approved extracurricular assignments for 2009-10 school year.
n Approved the teacher contract for 2009-10 school year.
n Approved a conflict of interest statement for Board President Dave O'Brien. He has a daughter with a substitute license now.
n Announced upcoming board meetings: Sept. 3, budget public hearing, administration office; Sept. 14, regular meeting and budget adoption, Mentone Elementary School; and Oct. 12, regular meeting, Mentone. All meetings are at 7:30 p.m.
Valley board members are O'Brien, Hal Hoffman, Rod Eaton, Bryan Murphy and Mark Wise.
