Lawrence County charter school boards meet in preparation for upcoming year

It was announced at Thursday’s meeting of the Lawrence County Independent Schools board that member Chad Shock would resign from his seat. Shock is a founding board member for LCIS and previously served as the interim president prior to the July election of Jason Lyons as president. 

“I have nothing but love for this school, the people in this school. A lot of hard work and dedication went into this,” Shock said. “I'm not leaving because of anything other than the fact that I have been on the board since the beginning and, it's just, I've done what I've set out to do.” 

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LCIS enrollment for the next school year is down from the Indiana Department of Education count of 301 last year to 245 currently, which LCIS director of finance Trisha Turner told the board she felt was a point of concern. The school currently has openings for students in kindergarten, first, seventh and eighth grades. 

The board approved personnel changes. 

New hires: 

• Sarah Daughtrey – assistant principal 
• Debra Day – kindergarten teacher 
• Lilly Books – first grade teacher 
• Treydan Pemberton – first grade teacher 
• Maitlyn Alvey – second grade teacher 
• Taylor Sowders – kindergarten instructional aide 

Resignations/terminations: 

• Heather Robertson  
• Alexis Speer 
• Avery James 
• Tammy Spradlin 

With these hires, all teaching positions at the school are currently filled, according to Turner. Students begin the 2022-23 school year Aug. 9.

July 28 SCA board meeting

The Springville Community Academy board of trustees voted Thursday to move forward with a plan that would see the school create a new access route to the parking lot on the building’s north side. 

Part of the original access route fell on property still owned by North Lawrence Community Schools, which signed ownership of the building over to Perry Township after the township advisory board voted unanimously to accept it back in June 2021.  

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Indiana code states that if a township provides a school corporation with land, that land must be offered back to the township before it could be sold by the corporation, should any facilities built on that land be closed, or otherwise no longer used for educational purposes. In the process of previously expanding the Springville school, NLCS acquired additional nearby land, which includes the section which provided access to the parking lot. Because it was acquired from a private seller, opposed to being provided by the township, NLCS was not required to offer the land back to Perry Township. 

The land for the new access route is being given to SCA by the Armstrong family, which owns property adjacent to the school. The board approved a budget of up to $15,000 for the project. 

SCA will be adding second classes for both kindergarten and fourth grade. The decision was made based on enrollment, with 30 kindergarten and 34 fourth grade students, the groups will be split into two to reduce class sizes. Paige Fisher was hired to lead the additional kindergarten class.

According to SCA administrator Jayme Davis, total enrollment for SCA was at 177 as of Thursday evening, with some applications still to be processed. During their initial proposal to Ball State, SCA listed minimum enrollment for the school at 218 students, with the school being able to have an enrollment of 375 at its maximum capacity.

Springville Community Academy charter authorization hearing

SCA and the University of Southern Indiana hosted a meeting Friday to discuss USI’s involvement with the charter school. 

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Previously, SCA was authorized as a charter school through Ball State University out of Muncie. At a board meeting in June, the SCA board President Albert Cross announced the school’s intention to seek authorization from USI instead, citing the Evansville-based university's willingness to allow SCA to teach grades seven and eight, opposed to the original K-6 authorization from Ball State, as a motivating factor. 

Over 100 people were in attendance in the school’s cafeteria, seemingly all of which came to support the proposal, according to USI’s Mohammed F. Khayum, who spoke at the meeting on behalf of the university.