The Monroe County Community School Corporation held its monthly Board of School Trustees meeting 6 p.m. Tuesday. The board reviewed impending funding cuts and a program to address student mental health needs.
Due to a drop in enrollment of 535.5 students, MCCSC will experience a 4.4% decrease in funding from the Indiana Department of Education for 2020-21. This amounts to a loss of $3,352,300. It is expected that the mid-year student count taking place in February will recoup some of the losses from November and December. Students enrolled in half-day kindergarten are counted as 0.5 students.
Superintendent Judy Demuth began the meeting by recognizing the faculty at MCCSC for their additional work as the district continues in-person learning.
“The teaching that’s happening by our teachers, the cleaning that’s happening by our custodians, the contact tracing, the work by our nurses, it’s amazing,” DeMuth said. “I can’t tell you how honored I am to have everybody working toward that goal of keeping MCCSC safe for our children and staff members.”
Markay Winston, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, introduced the Whole Child Support System, or WCSS, which was created in response to concerning patterns seen in the student body.
WCSS focuses on creating a centralized approach to intervention by focusing on students’ academic, behavioral and emotional wellness. In addition, the initiative will target possible learning gaps that have formed while students were away from school during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will also respond to the lack of investigations taking place on cases of child abuse.
Byron Turner, a family case manager supervisor at the Indiana Department of Child Services, said reports of child abuse have dropped by 43% from February to April in the area. However, between July and September, there was a 25% increase, but this is still below what officials would consider normal as it is 20 points lower than this time last year.
“The drop in reports were unprecedented and directly correlated to schools being shut down early this year,” Turner said.
Turner said substantiated investigations of child abuse and neglect nearly doubled in June. He noted an increase of substance abuse and domestic violence in the community and one out of every 50 students at MCCSC is in the care of the state.
More broadly, case managers have noted what they believe is an increased rate of depression in students ages 11 to 18, which they often attributed to a lack of socialization.
The board unanimously approved the request for a waiver for the IREAD-3 testing requirement due to a loss of instructional time in the spring of this year. If rejected, all current third grade students would be expected to take the test as a part of the state-wide requirement. In addition, they approved the 2021 budget resolutions for a bus replacement plan, capital projects plan and electronic funds transfer.
Renee Stikeleather, MCCSC director of health services, said a call center and contact-tracing center were created to monitor COVID-19 cases and prevent the spread of the virus. The call center, which is located at Bloomington High School South, accepts information relating to students and faculty experiencing symptoms or have tested positive with COVID-19. Stikeleather explained this process has led to some long nights.
“We don’t go home until everyone is notified,” Stikeleather said.
MCCSC reports that 12 out of 23 buildings with in-person learning have no reported COVID-19 cases. There is also no knowledge of COVID-19 being spread in a classroom at MCCSC.
Across the district, 40.5 in-person students have tested positive for COVID-19 since they began recording cases in September.
This was the last Board of Trustees meeting before four of the board members are up for election Nov. 3. A full recording of the MCCSC Board of Trustees meeting can be viewed here.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article neglected to include that the number of investigations that doubled in June were substantiated and misstated Byron Turner's title.
