By: Anna Wozniak
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
anna@thevillagereporter.com
The Montpelier Board of Education met for their annual organizational meeting, and appointed Nate Rose as Board President and Troy Roth as Vice President.
CFO / Treasurer Carla Rice, Superintendent Jamison Grime, Principals Mrs. Su Thorp and Mr. Lance Thorp joined the board, which has yet to appoint the last member for the remainder of 2024.
They voted to make the meetings regularly occur on the second Tuesday of the month at 5:30 p.m., with June 25 and November 5 being exceptions to this.
Annual authorizations were then approved, legal counsel and committee appointments for the year were approved as well.
The board then moved into their first regular meeting of the year, beginning with recognizing the students of the month, who were as follows:
Wilder Souza (kindergarten), Grace Chamberlin (first grade), Athena Newland (first grade), Beau Gambler (third grade), Corbyn Muehlfeld (fourth grade), John Lewis (fifth grade), Kamille Burk (sixth grade), Christian Nofzinger (seventh grade), Daelyn Zuver (eighth grade), Shelby Lockwood (high school).
Principal Su Thorp then updated the Board on the happenings of the high school, sharing that all of the musicals and concerts have gone really well.
There will be no school on January 15th, February 8th for parent teacher conferences, and January 17th will see an early dismissal.
The minutes from the December 12, 2023 meeting were approved as presented, as were the financial reports, which included donations and a grant allocation to the HVAC system.
Employment recommendations were approved as presented, as was legal counsel for the district, a board service fund, and the committee appointments as presented.
It was when the board opened the floor to visitors that the MEA President, Kendra Michaelis, shared after the MEA voted the board’s proposed contract down, the board agreed to meet for negotiations on January 30, 2024 -which will hopefully see the teachers of Montpelier soon working under a fair contract.
A citizen of Montpelier then brought up that they had been denied access to the recreation area, even though the rules state that it is available to the “public and community members” during public hours of operation.
Mr. Rose said that if it was an issue, the board could consider closing the recreation center to all public use, and that regardless of this family’s position as Montpelier district tax-paying community members, the board has decided to disallow them recreation center access without further comment, with Mr. Rose sharing that they would not be “discussing the issue right now.”
An audience member asked the board “if you aren’t going to discuss it now, when it’s brought up, when are you going to discuss it?”
Mr. Rose replied that they would discuss it if the board deemed it appropriate to add to the agenda of topics discussed, which they promptly did, with Mrs. Gambler sharing that she would like to add the issue to the agenda, and be given adequate time to fully research the issue before they entered into executive session at 6:15 p.m.
