Carmichaels School Board accepts principal’s retirement
CARMICHAELS – After 39 years with the Carmichaels Area School District, Terry Ganocy will retire at the end of the school year, and the school board reluctantly accepted his resignation during a meeting Thursday night. After voting 6-0 to accept his resignation because of retirement, several board members thanked Ganocy, elementary principal, for his years of service to the district and noted that he will be missed. The board asked Superintendent James Zalar to send a thank you letter on behalf of the board for Ganocy’s years of dedicated work to the district and wish him well in his retirement.
Director Richard Krause remembered when Ganocy was principal at Crucible Elementary School when he attended school there.
“He is an outstanding administrator for the district, and I offer him my congratulations,” Krause said.
Meanwhile, discussion at the beginning of the meeting centered on a slew of policies slated for either first or second reading. Several of the directors in attendance Thursday claimed that they had not seen the policies that were up for votes prior to the meeting, though Zalar said all directors should have received copies of them last month.
Two policies in particular, on charter schools and migrant students, caught the ire of Director J. L. Lechner. After Zalar explained that both policies were required in the district because of the No Child Left Behind Act, Lechner said he felt the migrant student policy was redundant.
“Every student in our district is offered the same thing. I don’t understand why we have to pass this,” he asked.
Zalar said as a requirement of the act, the policy must be in place or the district stands a chance of losing state and federal funds. At that, Lechner asked Zalar for a copy of the act that has forced the district into adding new policies.
“I get tired of hearing about it,” he said. “I’d like to decipher it for myself.”
Zalar said the act is about 1,800 pages, and he noted that more act-required policies will come before the board next month for approval. Because either the first reading or second reading of policies were approved Thursday, the school directors said they will have ample time to review them before they come back to the board again next month.
The second reading of the charter schools policy and the first reading of the migrant students policy both failed, with Lechner voting no to both. Director Michael Conte joined with Lechner in voting against the charter schools policy, while board President Ken Ganocy voted with Lechner in opposing the migrant students policy.
Directors Annabelle Pratt, Robert O. Hathaway and Linda Krajnak were absent Thursday.
In another matter, the board listened to teachers Kevin Willis and Rob Cole talk about their presentation at the National Science Teachers Association convention in Philadelphia recently. Cole, sixth-grade teacher, said the presentation focused on the nature trail and the use of Willis’ Envirothon students to teach the younger students about the trail.
Willis said he and Cole submitted a proposal to NSTA because the convention was going to be in Philadelphia, and he said the teachers who heard their presentation were very interested and wanted to try the project at their schools.
“Environmental science is a very hot topic right now,” Willis said. “We’re using our environmental science students to teach the sixth-graders. Teachers liked the way we got the environmental science and ecology students into our classes.”
Willis stressed that the Envirothon students developed the program and then taught it to the younger students.
He said the program has become another form of assessment for him and another learning tool for the students.
The board also conducted the following business:
– Voted to expel a student for the rest of the 2002-03 school year after he had a disciplinary hearing. The student is permitted to return next school year but must seek psychological counseling, and signs of academic progress must be presented to the school board after the first and third nine-week periods.
– Approved $1 hourly increase for all substitute cafeteria workers, which brings their wages in line with other substitute employees, who make $6.15 an hour.
– Announced that the board will hold a budget workshop Thursday at 4 p.m. in the high school conference room to review the preliminary 2003-2004 budget given out this week by business manager Vince Belczyk.
– Voted to solicit approval from the state Department of Education for the purchase of a handicapped vehicle, to be paid for with 83 percent Access funds and 17 percent from the district’s general fund.