Thursday, December 23, 2010
Happy Birthday Ralph Shepherd!
Ralph Shepherd, who never missed a meeting in his 20 years as a member of the New Richmond Board of Education, turned 80 Dec. 23. He was honored at Thursday's Liars Club meeting at New Richmond's McDonalds. Joining in honoring Mr. Shepherd (center) were State Sen. Tom Niehaus (left) and State Rep. Danny Bulp (right).
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Troubadours tour district with show
New Richmond High School's Troubadours made their 2010 Christmas Concert tour of disrict buildings on Wednesday.
Their stop at Monroe Elementary featured Monroe principal Mark Bailey and district elementary band director Jeff Folkens joined the Troubadours for the Hallelujah Chorus, playing piccolo trumpets.
Click on the picture below to watch the Troubadours' 2010 District Tour stop at Monroe Elementary.
Right click and choose Save Target As to download
Their stop at Monroe Elementary featured Monroe principal Mark Bailey and district elementary band director Jeff Folkens joined the Troubadours for the Hallelujah Chorus, playing piccolo trumpets.
Click on the picture below to watch the Troubadours' 2010 District Tour stop at Monroe Elementary.
Right click and choose Save Target As to download
Monday, December 20, 2010
Schools set record for food donations
Students at New Richmond schools and their families were in a giving mood this holiday season, donating a record 18,200 canned and non-perishable food items to the district’s annual food drive for the New Richmond Food Pantry.
“We helped 192 families Saturday, and could not have done it without NREVSD students and staff,” said Melinda Graser, president of the New Richmond Food Pantry. “More than 350 children are included in those 192 families.”
New Richmond High School led the way with a record 11,439 food items.
NRHS student council president Emily Smiddy (center right) and vice-president Myla Gordo (center left) are surrounded by volunteers from student council and Deron Shinkle's advanced drafting class who helped load the record 11,439 food items collected for the New Richmond Food Pantry.
“The high school student council would like to thank everyone for their donations to the food drive,” said NRHS student council adviser Jim Robinson. “In only 13 days, we collected 11,439 items including $1311.06 in monetary donations.”
Terri Flamm's physical education class set an all-time overall record for a class with 2896 items; John Callebs’ math class collected 2419, and the special education classes along with the office staff, graduation academy, teacher academy and library collected 2093 items. A combined effort by the classes of Sue Griffin and Jaime Kipfer collected 1895 items.
“We had a goal to top our previous record of 6975 and we easily topped that by over 4400,” said Robinson.
All New Richmond buildings reported donations of more than 1000 items with Locust Corner Elementary collecting 2479 items, Monroe Elementary 2194 items and New Richmond Elementary 1600.
More than 50 volunteers, including present and past students of the New Richmond High School and members of the New Richmond Liars Club, helped deliver, sort and box the food items which were distributed on Dec. 18 at the American Legion Hall in New Richmond.
“The volunteers filled 210 boxes and what we didn’t give out to the 192 families will go on our shelves for distribution for the rest of the month,” said Graser, who is the building secretary at New Richmond Middle School. “The schools probably contributed 95 percent of the items we will give out this year. A tremendous thank you to everyone.”
The New Richmond Food Pantry is in its 30th year. Other Pantry officers are Tom Marck, vice president, and Sonia Kroger, treasurer.
NRHS students (from left) John Channels, Dominic Steelman and Jacob Crooker take a break from loading the 11,349 food items onto a truck supplied by Duke Energy for transport to the New Richmond Food Pantry. (Photos by Jim Robinson)
“We helped 192 families Saturday, and could not have done it without NREVSD students and staff,” said Melinda Graser, president of the New Richmond Food Pantry. “More than 350 children are included in those 192 families.”
New Richmond High School led the way with a record 11,439 food items.
NRHS student council president Emily Smiddy (center right) and vice-president Myla Gordo (center left) are surrounded by volunteers from student council and Deron Shinkle's advanced drafting class who helped load the record 11,439 food items collected for the New Richmond Food Pantry.“The high school student council would like to thank everyone for their donations to the food drive,” said NRHS student council adviser Jim Robinson. “In only 13 days, we collected 11,439 items including $1311.06 in monetary donations.”
Terri Flamm's physical education class set an all-time overall record for a class with 2896 items; John Callebs’ math class collected 2419, and the special education classes along with the office staff, graduation academy, teacher academy and library collected 2093 items. A combined effort by the classes of Sue Griffin and Jaime Kipfer collected 1895 items.
“We had a goal to top our previous record of 6975 and we easily topped that by over 4400,” said Robinson.
All New Richmond buildings reported donations of more than 1000 items with Locust Corner Elementary collecting 2479 items, Monroe Elementary 2194 items and New Richmond Elementary 1600.
More than 50 volunteers, including present and past students of the New Richmond High School and members of the New Richmond Liars Club, helped deliver, sort and box the food items which were distributed on Dec. 18 at the American Legion Hall in New Richmond.
“The volunteers filled 210 boxes and what we didn’t give out to the 192 families will go on our shelves for distribution for the rest of the month,” said Graser, who is the building secretary at New Richmond Middle School. “The schools probably contributed 95 percent of the items we will give out this year. A tremendous thank you to everyone.”
The New Richmond Food Pantry is in its 30th year. Other Pantry officers are Tom Marck, vice president, and Sonia Kroger, treasurer.
NRHS students (from left) John Channels, Dominic Steelman and Jacob Crooker take a break from loading the 11,349 food items onto a truck supplied by Duke Energy for transport to the New Richmond Food Pantry. (Photos by Jim Robinson)
Thursday, December 16, 2010
School Board meeting rescheduled
Thursday's New Richmond Board of Education meeting scheduled to be held at Locust Corner Elementary has been cancelled and rescheduled for Dec. 23 at 5 p.m. at the Board office at the Market Street School.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
NRE exceeds food drive goal
Hans & Franz (AKA NRE principal Gary Combs and PE teacher John Bagley) returned to NRE's televisions for another appeal for food items for the school's 2010 Food Pantry drive, which has exceeded the school's goal of 1000 items.
New Richmond superintendent Adam Bird makes a guest appearance in this episode.
Click on the photo below to watch this week's televised appeal.
New Richmond superintendent Adam Bird makes a guest appearance in this episode.
Click on the photo below to watch this week's televised appeal.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
NREVSD featured in WKRC report
WKRC television's Rich Jaffe featured a report on the station's Dec. 9 newscast on the challenges New Richmond faces in replacing up to 1/3rd of its budget by 2016 when $8.1 million annual state utility de-regulation payments are scheduled to stop. Superntendent Adam Bird and New Richmond Elementary teachers Bridget Bell and David Smith are interviewed.
Click on the play button on the video screen below to watch the feature.
Click on the play button on the video screen below to watch the feature.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Board receives financial plan
New Richmond’s Board of Education has been presented with a plan to use attrition and ask district voters to approve a future capital improvement levy to offset the projected loss of $8.1 million the New Richmond Exempted Village Schools will experience after 2016 due to Ohio’s deregulation of electrical utilities.
The contingency plan, submitted by New Richmond superintendent Adam Bird at a combined school board work session and meeting of the district’s Financial Planning Committee Dec. 6, anticipates savings of $4.7 million per year by 2017 by not replacing 35 teachers and 14 support staff personnel expected to retire in the next five years.
Click here to read the plan
The plan received the endorsement of the financial planning committee, which includes Scott Henderson, Jeanie Williams and Joe Middeler from the New Richmond business community, and parents Laura Jones, Rich Grogan and Mark Miller. Bird and the committee were asked to come up with recommendations by the board’s January meeting.
When Ohio deregulated electrical utilities in 2001 and reduced their assessed value from 88 to 25 percent, the state began taxing utilities on a kilowatt per hour basis and agreed to share that revenue with affected school districts for 15 years in the form of deregulation payments.
“This plan was born out of necessity,” said Bird. “These changes are being considered because of our financial forecast.”
The plan is based on a district retirement survey made in September. Bird noted that there’s no guarantee there will be the number of retirements anticipated and for that reason he included a reduction in force (RIF) clause in each year of the 5-year plan.
“A reduction in force will be used if anticipated retirements do not occur,” said Bird.
The plan also calls for a change in school day starts in 2011-12 to make the transportation department more efficient, changing Locust Corner Elementary and Monroe Elementary into P-4 buildings and New Richmond Elementary into a grade 5-6 building in the 2014-15 school year and go to a three-tier busing system and discussing a permanent improvement levy with the community in the next five years.
“Attrition is the way to go,” noted board member Kevin Walriven, who pointed to reductions of $2,272,474 in operating expenses over the past 10 years with the reduction of 25 positions due to attrition. “When you RIF you don’t lose the experienced teacher, you lose a beginning teacher.”
Since 2001 New Richmond schools have reduced administrators from 16 to 12, classroom teachers from 179 to 163 and classroom support staff from 41 to 36.
If all the retirements materialize over the next five years, New Richmond will need to transfer teachers based on their certification to fill openings.
New Richmond also faces a possible additional loss of $1.4 million per year should Duke Energy prevail in its request to the state to have the value of its non-generating property (meters, poles, substations) lowered.
A 5 mil permanent improvement levy could be considered in the next five years and would generate $2.5 million annually to be used to maintain school facilities, purchase computers, buses and textbooks, and capital expenditures.
The changes in planned spending and increased revenue of $7.2 million over 5 years will come to within $2.3 million in managing the 2016 shortfall in revenue.
Bird said the second phase of the plan to address the remaining $2.3 shortfall will be addressed by examining every appropriation to make sure it is essential, continue to lobby legislators to replace deregulation payments with additional kilowatt tax revenue funding, and to closely monitor the State Foundation Program as it develops in the biennium budgeting process.
“There will be three Ohio biennium budgets, two presidential elections and another gubernatorial election before that decision is necessary,” said Bird.
Ohio’s biennial budget could become a problem long before 2016.
Ohio faces an $8 billion shortfall in its next biennium budget in June and governor-elect John Kasich has said the shortfall will be made by budget cuts. The cuts may mean a 10 to 20 percent cut in state aid to schools. New Richmond receives 15 percent of its current $26 million in revenue from the state, compared to 43 percent for Batavia, 57 percent for Goshen and 66 percent for Bethel.
“What was once an asset of having two power stations in the school district could become a liability to the community in 2017,” said Bird. “The assessed value of the generating plants inflates the total value of the school district upon which school foundation payments are based and the district receives less state aid.”
The contingency plan, submitted by New Richmond superintendent Adam Bird at a combined school board work session and meeting of the district’s Financial Planning Committee Dec. 6, anticipates savings of $4.7 million per year by 2017 by not replacing 35 teachers and 14 support staff personnel expected to retire in the next five years.
Click here to read the plan
The plan received the endorsement of the financial planning committee, which includes Scott Henderson, Jeanie Williams and Joe Middeler from the New Richmond business community, and parents Laura Jones, Rich Grogan and Mark Miller. Bird and the committee were asked to come up with recommendations by the board’s January meeting.
When Ohio deregulated electrical utilities in 2001 and reduced their assessed value from 88 to 25 percent, the state began taxing utilities on a kilowatt per hour basis and agreed to share that revenue with affected school districts for 15 years in the form of deregulation payments.
“This plan was born out of necessity,” said Bird. “These changes are being considered because of our financial forecast.”
The plan is based on a district retirement survey made in September. Bird noted that there’s no guarantee there will be the number of retirements anticipated and for that reason he included a reduction in force (RIF) clause in each year of the 5-year plan.
“A reduction in force will be used if anticipated retirements do not occur,” said Bird.
The plan also calls for a change in school day starts in 2011-12 to make the transportation department more efficient, changing Locust Corner Elementary and Monroe Elementary into P-4 buildings and New Richmond Elementary into a grade 5-6 building in the 2014-15 school year and go to a three-tier busing system and discussing a permanent improvement levy with the community in the next five years.
“Attrition is the way to go,” noted board member Kevin Walriven, who pointed to reductions of $2,272,474 in operating expenses over the past 10 years with the reduction of 25 positions due to attrition. “When you RIF you don’t lose the experienced teacher, you lose a beginning teacher.”
Since 2001 New Richmond schools have reduced administrators from 16 to 12, classroom teachers from 179 to 163 and classroom support staff from 41 to 36.
If all the retirements materialize over the next five years, New Richmond will need to transfer teachers based on their certification to fill openings.
New Richmond also faces a possible additional loss of $1.4 million per year should Duke Energy prevail in its request to the state to have the value of its non-generating property (meters, poles, substations) lowered.
A 5 mil permanent improvement levy could be considered in the next five years and would generate $2.5 million annually to be used to maintain school facilities, purchase computers, buses and textbooks, and capital expenditures.
The changes in planned spending and increased revenue of $7.2 million over 5 years will come to within $2.3 million in managing the 2016 shortfall in revenue.
Bird said the second phase of the plan to address the remaining $2.3 shortfall will be addressed by examining every appropriation to make sure it is essential, continue to lobby legislators to replace deregulation payments with additional kilowatt tax revenue funding, and to closely monitor the State Foundation Program as it develops in the biennium budgeting process.
“There will be three Ohio biennium budgets, two presidential elections and another gubernatorial election before that decision is necessary,” said Bird.
Ohio’s biennial budget could become a problem long before 2016.
Ohio faces an $8 billion shortfall in its next biennium budget in June and governor-elect John Kasich has said the shortfall will be made by budget cuts. The cuts may mean a 10 to 20 percent cut in state aid to schools. New Richmond receives 15 percent of its current $26 million in revenue from the state, compared to 43 percent for Batavia, 57 percent for Goshen and 66 percent for Bethel.
“What was once an asset of having two power stations in the school district could become a liability to the community in 2017,” said Bird. “The assessed value of the generating plants inflates the total value of the school district upon which school foundation payments are based and the district receives less state aid.”
Monday, December 6, 2010
Holiday food drive on at schools
New Richmond's schools are collected food items for donation to the village food pantry.
At New Richmond Elementary that means the return of Hans & Franz (AKA NRE principal Gary Combs and PE teacher John Bagley) who use a morning televised skit to encourage students to bring in food items.
Click on the photo below to watch this week's televised appeal.
At New Richmond Elementary that means the return of Hans & Franz (AKA NRE principal Gary Combs and PE teacher John Bagley) who use a morning televised skit to encourage students to bring in food items.
Click on the photo below to watch this week's televised appeal.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
NRHS work study students helping NRE
Students in New Richmond High School’s work study program are gaining valuable employment skills through a partnership between the high school and New Richmond Elementary School.
“I have a group of ten students who volunteer at NRE four times a week ,” explained Amy Carey, intervention specialist at New Richmond High School.
New Richmond High School work study student Thomas Stansbury (right) describes how the program is working with New Richmond Elementary School. He was aided in his presentation by NRE principal Gary Combs and NRE student Emily Carey, daughter of NHHS intervention specialist Amy Carey.
“The students work in the NRE library, volunteer in Rosemary Wiebell's kindergarten class and help on PTO projects.”
The project was featured at the November meeting of the New Richmond Board of Education, held at New Richmond Elementary.
“Because of Ms. Spinnati (NRHS principal Diana Spinnati) and Mr. Combs (NRE principal Gary Combs), my students have a wonderful opportunity to build employability skills,” said Mrs. Carey.
“The work study program provides the students with an opportunity to learn and gain a hands on approach to the education profession,” said Combs. “Our teachers at New Richmond Elementary extend a helping a hand to our high school students interesting in becoming educators.”
“I have a group of ten students who volunteer at NRE four times a week ,” explained Amy Carey, intervention specialist at New Richmond High School.
New Richmond High School work study student Thomas Stansbury (right) describes how the program is working with New Richmond Elementary School. He was aided in his presentation by NRE principal Gary Combs and NRE student Emily Carey, daughter of NHHS intervention specialist Amy Carey.“The students work in the NRE library, volunteer in Rosemary Wiebell's kindergarten class and help on PTO projects.”
The project was featured at the November meeting of the New Richmond Board of Education, held at New Richmond Elementary.
“Because of Ms. Spinnati (NRHS principal Diana Spinnati) and Mr. Combs (NRE principal Gary Combs), my students have a wonderful opportunity to build employability skills,” said Mrs. Carey.
“The work study program provides the students with an opportunity to learn and gain a hands on approach to the education profession,” said Combs. “Our teachers at New Richmond Elementary extend a helping a hand to our high school students interesting in becoming educators.”
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