Quincy School Board approves grant process

3 months, 3 weeks ago

The school must seek the board's permission each year

The Quincy School Board approved the yearly application and writing process to apply for grants at Wednesday night’s board meeting.
Interim Superintendent Joel Murphy said they seek the board’s permission every year.
“A lot of grants that are on the list are on hiatus or QPS doesn’t qualify at this point, but as grants become available, this gives us the permission to write for them, and hopefully access those grants for our kids,” said Murphy.

The board also approved sending out about $400,000 in bids for life safety projects to be completed this summer. The total costs will amount to a bit over $416,000 but will not require additional bonding. The majority of the work will consist of replacing fire alarms and systems in Adams, Baldwin, Berrian, Ellington and Madison Schools.
The District is also looking at $162,000 to resurface the lower parking lot and create a concrete bus lane at Quincy High School.

Discipline policies were also discussed during Wednesday night’s meeting. Board member Tom Dickerson said the policy committee will be discussing and analyzing discipline policies across the district
to better understand what’s being done.
“We want to take a look across the district and see if we’ve got our disciplinary policies in line across all of our schools,” said Dickerson. “Discipline continues to be a problem all over, and we just want to make sure that we’re applying the discipline across the district in a way that’s meaningful.”

In other business, the curriculum committee highlighted the progress of the “Seven Habits” initiative that the schools have implemented. The committee addressed how the seven habits need to be studied as to how they are impacting students.
Also discussed were the following:
-Project Lead the Way at the vocational school has grown. Students have scored well on the assessments given and this year, the program has been recommended to become certified.
-Kindergarten students who were enrolled in early childhood were compared to those who were not. Students were monitored to study their performance difference. Also, with the help of a grant, early childhood will go from a four day to a five day next year.
-Special education’s program Read 180 has shown 100% of both Junior High and High School students have increased their reading level.
-High school college and career ready programs are designed to help underachieving students with high academic performance prepare for college. Most are first generation college attendees.

The finance committee did not meet this month but presented the financial report to the Board as of January 2013. Board member Stephanie Erwin said the report is “Close to the budget and is doing well.” Regarding the self-insurance fund, it was reported there is a deficit of $166,598. Erwin said this is a struggling fund, and the board will have to do something in the near future.

The board had several visitors before and during the meeting.

Before the meeting began, students and staff from Dewey School demonstrated activities from their Kindness and Justice Challenge. Board members and the public were told by students as to how their
acts of kindness were tallied each morning and a certain number of tallies earned a ‘gumball.’ The goal was to ‘earn’ enough gumballs to fill the gumball machine. Also presented were signs that were hung throughout the building, songs sung during morning assemblies and activities focusing on kindness.

Also, supporters of the leadership class at QHS were present to explain how the class is going and the affects it has on students. Teachers selected 30 students from about 200 to participate in the class, which allows students to have an outlet to serve the school and further their education in and out of the classroom.

All-State musicians selected from Quincy High School were in attendance to be recognized. Around 17 performers were present at the meeting. Kathi Dooley, Director of Music Education & Fine Arts said QHS was also acknowledged as the 2nd highest school with the most student selected as All-State Musicians in Illinois. Dooley said this “Allows us to show off some of our talented students.”