New school board members seated
By JOHN A. BALLENTINE
For The Prairie News
WYOMING – The Stark County School District has “cut ties” with Junior/Senior High School Principal Jeff Utsinger, according to Superintendent Brett Elliott.
Utsinger has been out of the schools since March and last December was hired as Assistant Superintendent in Canton, where he was scheduled to have a start date of July 1. Utsinger had been a principal at Stark County since the 2019-20 school year.
Megan McGann was hired in March to replace Utsinger.
“Mr. Utsinger had accumulated enough vacation/leave days to close out the school year,” Elliott said. “We agreed along with the board to cut ties with Mr. Utsinger and allow him to exhaust all leave time for the remainder of the year.”
In other school-related business, at a special meeting on April 28, newly elected members of the Stark County School Board were sworn in to their seats. Elliott, who was president pro tempore, gave the oath to the newly elected board members.
Those members are Ann Orwig, Emily Holman, Brian Rewerts and newly elected board member Erin Price, who replaces Beth Rumbold. Price is from Toulon and is married to husband Bob Price, owner of Bob’s Concrete.
Those four members join Bruce West, Dave Stewart and Matt Nagode on the board of education. After the swearing in ceremony, officers were elected. Orwig will return as board president for another two -year term, West as vice-president and Nagode as secretary. Barb Loane was approved as board treasurer and recording secretary.
The new board will meet the third Monday of every month, with the exception of January and February of 2022, when meetings will be Jan.18 and Feb. 22. All meetings will commence at 6 p.m. beginning in July. Currently the start time is 6:15 p.m. All meetings will be at the Stark County Elementary School cafeteria, unless designated otherwise.
Committee assignments were tabled to a later meeting in order to allow Orwig to confer with new member Price. Those committees are: Building and Finance; the Henry-Stark Cooperative board; the Stark County Foundation board; education and policy; plus athletics and extracurricular
Prior to seating the new board, the old board dealt with unfinished business. The Junior High English Language Arts curriculum and resources was approved for $28,369 to be paid through SAVVA (a school resource/textbook company).
