The Triton School Board held their monthly meeting on Monday, February 8th. Board members include: Terri Barnhart, Kevin Boyer, Steve Stichter, Ken Miller and Wes Rettinger.
The Board unanimously approved the school year calendar for 2021-2022. Superintendent Jeremy Riffle indicated that they had received comments and questions from patrons concerning the calendar and shared his appreciation for their interest. The calendar shows a start date of August 9, 2021 for staff and August 11, 2021 for students. There will still be a full two weeks of time off during the winter break.
Riffle indicated that a copy of the calendar will be distributed to staff on February 9th and also released in various social media.
The board also approved the planning process for summer school offerings. The State of Indiana does provide funding based on formulas for remediation classes. According to Riffle, school corporations must submit written plans for summer programming to the state.
Riffle explained they plan to update the school’s website saying the current website is both hard to navigate and edit. Speaking to the need to support marketing and branding efforts, Riffle said, “We need to make sure we are putting a product out there that we can associate with.”
Saturday, February 28th has been named as an e-Learning day when students will receive a video to watch and associated assignments virtually to be completed and turned into teachers. Riffle clarified that it is not a Saturday school and students will have from Friday to the following Wednesday to complete the assignments. He went on to say that they could have used February 15th that is listed on the calendar as a no school day (President’s Day), but wanted to be respectful of those who might have scheduled plans. The Triton schools have received a waiver of the 180 day State of Indiana requirement for instruction by counting them as hours.
Riffle said they completed the 100th day of in-person instruction last week and thanked staff and scholars for their efforts in making it happen. He indicated that he understands the need to digital learning. He has spoken at several past board meetings that the Triton staff believes that in-person instruction is preferable for students learning. According to Riffle, this is the first digital learning day since before Thanksgiving of 2020.
The board meets on the 2nd Monday of each month. At this time, they have moved the meetings to the Jr/Sr High School library to accommodate social distancing standards. Meetings have been live streaming as well.
