As COVID cases decline, the Columbia School Board, like many others, is moving its discussions away from testing and social distancing and toward future planning. 

March’s meeting showed this includes possible building expansions, standardized testing, pay raises, hiring and more. 

After a 1.5-hour executive session, the school board unanimously voted to approve a 5 percent increase in administrative wages and contracts as proposed. It approved the same increase for non-union, non-administrative staff wages. 

Columbia Superintendent of Columbia Schools Chris Grode explained for unionized employees, this wage increase was approved three years ago. 

Grode informed the board the next step in the ongoing facility study, which recently yielded discussions of expanding the high school, would be to meet with city officials to discuss expanding Route 3 to include a third lane. 

This, he said, is a “key factor” in determining if the expansion will be realized. 

“IDOT is not currently thrilled about putting an entrance between the middle school and Veterans (Parkway) in there, however, I really think it’s a good idea for the city,” Grode said. 

As school board president Greg Meyer summarized, these discussions came out of examining the city’s projected growth. 

At the annual Columbia Chamber of Commerce meeting last Wednesday, Columbia Assistant Superintendent Alyssa Smith explained the possible CHS expansion would double classroom space, “give a fresh, new look to the front of the high school,” and allow district offices to move to the high school providing more open space at Parkview Elementary. 

She also introduced the community to a new financial literacy course coming to the middle school, which was officially approved at Thursday’s school board meeting. 

“Every one of your professions has a component of financial literacy that can be huge for the impact on the students. They start off with learning a lot of the basics of how to have a checkbook, how to run a household budget, but then they really start learning about stocks and bonds, interest rates and all kinds of things like that,” Smith explained at the chamber meeting. “(The students) always ask, ‘Why do we need to know this?’ So, we’re going to be leaning on a lot of you to help us show ‘This is why you need to know this.’” 

Smith informed the school board that several business owners approached her after the chamber meeting with ideas on how they could enhance learning in this course. 

As is in a normal school year, March marks standardized testing time. The juniors took the SAT on Monday, while grades 3-8 are preparing to take the Illinois Assessment of Readiness tests next week. 

Yet, Columbia Middle School students have many fun events to look forward to as well, principal Angela Huels and fifth grade teacher Amber Haven said during the building report. 

This includes many in-class activities, March Reading Madness – a bracket-type competition where students vote for their favorite books – and St. Baldrick’s Foundation activities. 

The latter raises money to cure childhood cancer. The big head-shaving event is at noon  this Saturday at Ace’s Wild in Columbia. 

German students will be visiting Columbia High School and Columbia Middle School on April 29. 

Personnel items were also discussed at the meeting, with some new faces in the audience. The board voted to approve employing Kalli Hentis as a fifth grade reading teacher, Christine Kaiping as a sixth grade English/language arts teacher, Robert Post as a high school English teacher and Carolyn Kish as a high school science teacher. 

The board also accepted seven resignations, one of which was of Hentis as a paraprofessional and three were teachers from various district schools. 

At last month’s meeting, the board accepted April Becherer’s resignation as Eagleview Elementary principal and voted to not renew CMS assistant principal David Ackerman’s contract. 

When asked if the latter was discussed in executive session, Grode said he would not speak on the topic, but confirmed Ackerman’s employment stands as it did at the end of last month’s meeting. 

As the Republic-Times previously reported, there is an educator shortage that was made very visible by the Omicron surge earlier in 2022. Smith touched on some possible explanations for this when explaining how the district is seeing less applicants for open positions at the chamber meeting. 

Per meeting agendas, neither Becherer’s nor Ackerman’s positions have been filled. 

Smith also informed Columbia Chamber of Commerce members of a scam circulating where companies claim they are fundraising on behalf of the district, as well as other schools such as Immaculate Conception School. She said the district has “nothing to do with any of this” and told members that should the district be engaging in some sort of fundraising effort, it would have her or Grode’s name on it. 

 To view the full school board meeting, visit the district’s YouTube channel, KCHS.