Crestview board praises football team

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

CONVOY — The Crestview Local Board of Education honored several members of the Knights’ regional runner-up football team and learned of the demise of a financial software project during a brief final meeting of the year on Thursday.

Board members honored Head Coach Jared Owens and three members of the football team — Chase Clark, Luke Gerardot, and Braden Van Cleave — who attended Thursday’s board meeting.

“We’re very proud of these young men and wat they were able to do,” Owens said of his team. The Knights narrowly lost to McComb in a bruising double-overtime regional championship game during the Division VII football playoffs held in November.

Treasurer Ashley Whetsel also announced Thursday that the district’s MUNIS financial software project has been canceled.

“We worked really, really hard to implement this software,” she said, adding: “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

Whetsel said the software package needed some tweaks to make it serviceable for small, centralized school districts such as Crestview, but Tyler Technologies, which created the software, didn’t want to make those changes.

“They weren’t willing to make changes to accommodate us,” she told the board.

Whetsel also noted that Crestview would be refunded 85 percent of the money it spent on the project, and receive a 15-percent credit on the cost of any new financial software package it purchases. In the meantime, the district will continue to use a software package originally implemented in the 1990s.

“It still works,” she said.

Crestview High School Principal Mike Biro called the turnout for the school’s parent-teacher conferences disappointing, noting that only about 240 of a possible 888 face-to-face conferences were held.

“We’re trying to look at ways to increase the face-to-face (meetings), or what we can do to improve our parent-teacher conferences at the high school level,” Biro said.

Superintendent Mike Estes reported that the district has used 27½ hours, about half of the 57 hours it could use before make-up days are required. He also noted that the district LED lighting project will be done mostly in-house, with outside contractors needed for installation of exterior lighting only.

In personnel action, the board accepted the resignation of paraprofessional Susan Watts, while also learning of the reassignment of paraprofessionals Amy Wyatt and Candace Sites following Watt’s resignation, effective January 2, 2017, after two years with the district.

The board also learned that Casey Dowler should have been listed as a member of Crestview’s Building Leadership Team instead of Julie Cook.

Union Township trustees also attended the meeting to talk about a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) agreement with a local farming operation that the board would need to approve.

Board President John Auld was also appointed as president pro tempore for the organizational meeting being held on Thursday, January 9, starting at 6 p.m. That meeting will be followed by the board’s budget hearing and regular meeting.

The board also went into executive session to discuss personnel matters, with no action taken following the session.