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JERSEY SHORE -- Support for Jersey Shore Area School District's cyber program, JSOL, is the first of five goals outlined by Dr. Brian Ulmer, superintendent, for using more than $1.8 million from the Elementary and Secondary School Relief (ESSER) funds coming to the district sometime next month.
"We want to make sure that (JSOL) is an attractive option that is efficient and works," Ulmer reported at the school board meeting Monday night.
"We want to not only serve kids that are in it but we want to attract kids back from cyber schools into our own programs," he added.
Ulmer noted that the ultimate goal of JSOL is to have district teachers teaching the program.
"It is a goal of the teachers and the parents and it is a goal of mine," he stated.
The ESSER funds are grants to school district to address COVID-19 impact on school districts and the impact it continues to have. This is the second round of ESSER funding. Ulmer noted that the first round was used to provide health and safety equipment and technology necessary to bring the district into a one-to-one model, with each student having an iPad or Chromebook at the beginning of the school year.
The second goal outlined by Ulmer for use of the funds is to maintain the district's current technology so that student can move to a remote platform of instruction when necessary.
"We need to make sure that we can learn anytime, anywhere. That will also help us support our flexible instructional days," he explained.
Ulmer recommended that the board use the grant funding to go through the budget process and take the grant funds to replace technology and take money that would have been set aside for the lease payments on iPads at the high school and start committing those funds for future technology purchases.
"Put yourself in a situation where you don't have to come up with additional budget funds in the future to replace the devices that you have now purchased with grant funds," he told the board.
Remediation of students' learning losses is included in the second round of ESSER funding and Ulmer listed this as the third goal for the grants.
Citing the concerns of parents. teachers, the board and the community for the what students have lost because of COVID, Ulmer said that one of the goals of this round of funding is to remediate that learning loss.
"Our goal is really to help students close those gaps because of school closure last spring and because of remote learning," he said.
"We're looking at after school and summer programming to make that happen," he added.
The fourth goal was to maintain current health and safety measures making sure that equipment still works and the district has the necessary cleaning supplies.
Student access to wi-fi in the community and on the buses was stated as the fifth goal of the funding as outline by Ulmer.
"We are also looking at trying to get some wireless access points on our buses," Ulmer reported.
"There's a couple of benefits to that. One of them is geographically we have a very large district and we have some kids that are on buses for a long time. If we can target some of those long bus runs and put access points on those buses you're going to increase time that kids have access," Ulmer explained.
The second round of ESSER funds must be used by June, 2023.
In other business, under personnel, the board approved:
--Hiring a family consumer science teacher for the 2021-22 school year using a staff reduction.
--The appointment of Cody Ulmer as the assistant middle school wrestling coach at a $2,368 stipend effective Feb. 1. In conjunction with this, the board accepted the resignation of Robert Harrow as assistant middle school wrestling coach, effective Jan. 31.
The board voted down a motion to hire a CTE health occupations instructor by a 5-4 vote. Voting no were: Harry Brungard, Patrice Doebler, Angela Grant, Nancy Petrosky and Mary Thomas. Voting yes were: David Becker, Wayne Kinley, Michelle Stemmler and Craig Allen. Some of the board members cited not knowing how a health occupations program would be financed as reasons for a no vote.
The board approved the following donations: the McInroy-Sheffer People Trust, $600 for interscholastic academic competitions; Hess Truck STEM grant, 12,2020 Hess ambulance and rescue toy trucks and downloadable curriculum for the Jersey Shore Elementary School STEAM/STEM lab; Exxon Mobile Educational Alliance, $500 for Jersey Shore Area Elementary School in support and maintenance of math and/or science; and Donor Choose, $404 for durable headphones for Jersey Shore Elementary kindergarten for use with iPads.
The 2021-22 high school course catalog with the exception of the health careers program was approved by the board.
The next board meeting will be at 7 p.m. Feb. 22.