MANSFIELD, Ohio—A new principal for the Spanish Immersion School and a three-year agreement with City Mills Technology dominated actions at a special session Wednesday for the Mansfield City Schools Board of Education.
Other topics included summer camps, renewal of an NCOCC agreement, and an executive session.
Gabe Costa was unanimously approved as the principal of the Spanish Immersion School. Costa succeeds retiring principal Jody Nash.
Costa has served as a third grade teacher for four years and third through sixth grade language arts teacher for the past year. Previously he taught in Houston, Texas at a bilingual school.
“We wish him well and welcome him to another level, or different direction, in his career,” said Garverick following his introduction.
Costa attended the meeting with his wife Adrienne Costa and his son Gregory Costa who is visiting from Mexico.
The Spanish Immersion, preschool through sixth grade, has approximately 238 students. Two of the teachers are permanent. Costa noted that it’s a public school. He said many people have the misconception that it’s a private school and they wouldn’t be able to afford the tuition. He would like the community to understand that it’s a public school.
“Most of the teachers are visiting teachers. The state of Ohio offers a three-year visiting teacher license so we get teachers from Spain and they can come for three years,” said Costa.
The students at Spanish Immersion hear Castilian Spanish from the teachers from Spain and Latin American Spanish from Costa and the school’s other teachers.
“The goal,” Costa said, “is that students become culturally and linguistically multilingual.”
The students enjoy Spanish holidays, they read Spanish authors and learn about Spanish artists. Kindergarten through second grade is a full immersion experience. They only speak Spanish while in the school. Beginning in third grade they also use English.
Costa said he hopes to continue teaching by relieving teachers on occasion or by reading to students.
City Mills Technology and NCOCC
The board approved two contract renewal, one with City Mills Technology and one with NCOCC, which Superintendent Brian Garverick said provides financials, payroll, and fiscal services. The cost is dependent on the number of students in the district, and last year cost the district approximately $83,000 last year.
City Mills Technology of Mansfield is the district’s technology services provider, and their current one-year contract will expire on June 30. Technology affects every role in the district said City Mills Technology President David Rose after the meeting.
“Everybody has a computer, everybody has a cell phone, everybody has a tablet. It’s how we communicate with people in the district or outside the district, and we are integrating more technology into the classroom, he said.
“So we look at all of the computers and the network throughout the district to make sure that’s all up to standard and make sure it’s cost-effective…We’ve canceled about $100,000 a year contracts for software and services that really were not being utilized. We just brought our phone system back in house and we calculated that over five years we’ve calculated about $28,000 in savings.”
The district is changing their network provider and instead of spending $88,000 a year, the district will pay $37,000 a year, said Rose.
“They have been a real breath of fresh air this year,” said Garverick. “They’re going to provide six technology support personnel for integration, professional development and other related services for hardware and software applications around the district.”
“As you’re all aware, we have been analyzing and working on our Century Link monthly telephone bill, trying to reduce those services,” Rose said to the board. “We reduced about another $250 a month, so after our July contract kicks in, our monthly phone bill will be down between $1,600 and $1,800 a month.”
He also explained that they are working with Century Link E-Rate education specialists and because of credits they received the school district will have to make pay-backs for fiscal year 2015.
City Mills worked with the E-Rate specialists to look at other years. “We found that for fiscal year 2012 the paperwork was not filed correctly at the end of the year, so we were eligible for a little over $239,000 of refund money from E-Rate and we never got that as a district and it goes back to the prior superintendent not working on the reports.
“So we filed an extension letter with E-Rate permission and found out yesterday that all of them were accepted. We got the reports today and verified the amounts and we’re sending those in. Within about three months, we should be getting that money. I was pretty excited because that’s a big, significant amount of money coming back to the district.”
City Mills is also working on a project at the bus garage for the bus radios. Rose said there have been significant communication issues between the busses and bus garage. There are wiring problems. City Mills is producing a proposal to upgrade the whole district.
“All of the busses will have new radios; we’ll have new computers for the bus garage and enhanced software so we will be able to implement GPS tracking on all of the busses,” Rose added.
“I’m all about safety,” board President Renda Cline said. “So I’m excited about the improvement especially in these days and times. Everyone wants to feel that their child is safe and as we transport them we’re doing our best to keep our children safe.”
At the conclusion of the special session the board went into executive session to discuss its continuing search for a new district treasurer.
We’ve canceled about $100,000 a year contracts for software and services that really were not being utilized. We just brought our phone system back in house and we calculated that over five years we’ve calculated about $28,000 in savings,” CFO David Rose said.
