Warsaw Schools To Welcome Back Photographer Thomas Franklin
Posted
Jackie Gorski-
Warsaw Community Schools will be welcoming back photographer Thomas Franklin as a guest speaker, Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert said during the Warsaw School Board meeting Monday.
“Thomas was on Ground Zero during 9/11. I can’t believe we’re already on the 20-year mark. But almost everybody’s seen Thomas Franklin’s photograph. He took a famous photograph of firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero,” Hoffert said. Franklin is planning to speak at WCS on Sept. 3.
He said none of WCS’ students were alive during the 9/11 attacks.
According to a previous Times-Union article, Franklin spoke at Warsaw Community High School in 2017.
Hoffert said the last time Franklin was at the school corporation, WCS could say their juniors and seniors were alive during the attacks, “even though they were very young.”
This time around, this will be history for students attending the school corporation, Hoffert said. It will be a lot of sharing the history “that most of us in this room lived through,” and help a new generation understand that history.
Hoffert also said WCS “had a wonderful start” to the 2021-22 school year. He said he was thankful the school year didn’t start Thursday due to the storms, uprooting of trees and damage.
“Everybody couldn’t believe we were starting on Friday the 13th,” he said. However, the day ended off fine.
There were some difficult start-of-the-year challenges, such as student drop-offs and pick-ups, Hoffert said.
In other business, parent Lori Rose addressed the Board during the comment section of the meeting. She said she was a little surprised, and not in a good way, at the state of the high school at orientation and back-to-school night.
A possible solution. she offered, was if CARES Act funds could be used to hire more custodians or to increase pay to entice people to custodial jobs and make the high school more presentable.
The Board didn’t address Rose’s comment during the meeting.
In other business, the Board approved:
• The 2022 budget to be advertised. There will be a public budget hearing during the Sept. 20 meeting. The budget will be adopted at the Oct. 26 meeting.
• Several donations, including Nextremity, office furniture at $10,000; Kroger, hand sanitizer; and K21, fitness equipment.
• The Teacher Appreciation Grant policy.
Hoffert said the policy is something they have to submit every year to the Indiana Department of Education to make sure the dollars are allotted for the Teacher Appreciation Grant, which is a fund that Indiana legislatures put in yearly stipends for teachers depending on scores measured the year before.
