Vantage Board of Education OKs contracts

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent sports editor

The Vantage Career Center Board of Education made short work of a light agenda on Thursday.

During the 22-minute meeting, board members heard from Vantage High School Director Tony Unverferth, who deemed last week’s Open House and Taste of Vantage event a big success.

“Miriam Owens always does an awesome job and this year it was pretty awesome to see how she put everything together,” Unverferth said. “I think we had 20 businesses up and down the hallways and all of those businesses aligned with one or two of our labs and talked to parents, former students, current students, prospective students, and kind of showed them what they could be getting themselves into job wise and career wise.

“The whole reason we do that night is to welcome former students back, of course, but also to give prospective students and their parents a chance to come out, and, as of 8 a.m. this morning, we had over 224 applications for the 2019-2020 school year,” he added.

Unferverth also noted more than three dozen students will be competing in various state competitions over the next month, and he commended senior Criminal Justice Student Cody Gaham of Parkway.

“He was the first in the history of Ohio to win the Ohio Civil Rights Commission’s Martin Luther King essay contest twice,” Unverferth said.

During his monthly report to the board, Superintendent Rick Turner said officials are getting ready to move forward with Vantage’s five-year strategic planning process, and he noted that Senate Bill 89, often referred to as the career tech deregulation bill, was introduced in the Ohio Senate on Wednesday. The bill will be referred to the Senate Education Committee over the next several days, with sponsored testimony likely to take place over the next couple of weeks.

In other business, board members approved three-year contracts with Career Tech Supervisors Paula VanTilburg and Ted Verhoff, and two-year contracts for Assistant Treasurer Dianna Ashbaugh, Superintendent Secretary Anna Baker, Community Relations Coordinator Miriam Owens, and cafeteria workers Lisa Enyart and Tara Miller.

The board also hired Douglas Edelbrock, Christopher Cline, Barrett Dorner, and Jon Jones as firefighting instructors; Kelli Bergstrom, Jessica Hoyng, and Ashlyn Pierstorff as practical nursing program instructors; and the board accepted the resignations of OTC Medical Assistant Instructor Christy Wortman, OTC Interim Director Kathleen Tyler; and Community Relations Consultant Mary Jo Wilhelm.

Board members approved an out-of-state trip for Construction Equipment, Electricity, and Carpentry students to attend the Building Contractors Association seminars in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on March 12 and 14, and the board gave the okay to a number of overnight trips, including one for FFA students to participate in the FFA Ag Mechanics competition in Wooster on April 4 and 5; an overnight stay for Skills USA State contestants in Dayton April 12 and 13; an overnight stay for FFA students to participate in the State FFA Outdoor Power competition in Wooster on April 22 and 23, and another for FFA students to attend the State FFA Convention in Columbus May 2-4; an overnight stay for FCCLA State contestants in Columbus April 23-26, and an overnight stay for HOSA State contestants in Columbus April 9 and 10.

The board also agreed to remove April 19 as a calamity make-up day and rescheduled it for April 22, along with May 23 and 24 and May 28-31.

The next meeting of the Vantage Career Center Board of Education will be at 5:15 p.m. Thursday, April 4, in the district conference room, followed by the annual All Boards Dinner Program at 6 p.m. in the Vantage Commons.