Trio of Eastern coaches get contract extensions

The coaching contracts were on the agenda of the Eastern-Greene School Board's agenda Monday evening and the vote to extend the contracts was unanimous.

Boys basketball coach Andy Igel, football coach Luke Dean and baseball coach Trevor McConnell's contracts now run through the 2010-2011 season.

In other personnel matters, Kim Picou was hired as a middle school teaching assistant effective Sept. 28 and Serena St. John was hired as a middle school teaching assistant effective Sept. 24.

Elementary teacher Keisha Blais was granted a leave of absence starting on Dec. 1 through approximately Feb. 1 and Kimberly Clayton was approved to serve as a substitute teacher in her absence.

Superintendent Ty Mungle addressed current concerns about the spread of the H1N1 flu virus and said his office had fielded a lot of questions recently.

"Debbie Babcock, our school nurse, has been providing everyone with lots of information and we're staying in contact with Marilyn Crays who is Greene County's Public Health Nurse," said Mungle. "We're doing our best to minimize the hazard."

Mungle said there is no requirement to close a school if 20 percent or more of the student population are absent but if the absentee rate should get up that high, schools are asked to report to the state and they assign someone to monitor the situation.

"Last Tuesday, we had 15 percent of our students out with the highest numbers out from the middle school," said Mungle.

That rate has since gone down and the highest absentees reported Monday were in the elementary grades.

"We're monitoring this closely every day," said Mungle. "A letter has been sent home to parents with information and the letter may also be read on the website. We want to encourage parents, if their child is sick or has a temperature of 100 degrees or more, to keep their child at home."

In other business, the board voted to approve the school's participation in the Community Work Experience Program. Mungle explained that the program, which covers a seven county region, places people in community service work situations in order for them to meet eligibility requirements for certain types of grants or assistance. He noted it's not a program that places people who have been court-ordered to do community service and the workers placed do not work directly with the children.

The approval of a revised National Gas Cooperative Agreement was on the agenda and was supported unanimously.

Mungle explained the cooperative is made up of 12-15 school corporations that purchase their natural gas as a group and negotiate for lower rates.

They also took care of some financial housekeeping and held an additional appropriations hearing, a standard yearly event in preparation for making a necessary shuffle of money from one fund to another.

Six board members were present. Board member Rob Hudson was absent.