SYRACUSE — Delayed by nearly a month, 2014-15 ISTEP+ results were finally released to the public Wednesday morning, Jan. 6, by the Indiana Department of Education. The delay was caused by more test rescore requests from parents than originally anticipated.

This week, numerous school corporation superintendents have spoken out over an age-old test utilized to not only measure elementary, middle school and early high school student’s growth and achievement, but to determine the effectiveness of a corporation’s teaching staff. The past few years have been incredibly rocky ones for CTB-McGraw Hill, the company responsible for …read more.

SYRACUSE — Seat belts required in school buses? Presently only six of the 50 states (Indiana is not one of them) require seat belts to be worn on school buses.

SYRACUSE — It’s becoming more than something discussed in a meeting or architectural drawings. One can drive by on Kern Road just south of the Eagles building and see the beginning stages of a new school being built.

NORTH WEBSTER — Wawasee Community Schools, along with Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department and North Webster Police have continued to follow the story of Deklan Hawthorne, a 6-year-old boy whose father reported his son was assaulted on an unsupervised school bus.

SYRACUSE — During the regular monthly meeting of the Wawasee school board Tuesday, Oct. 13, in Syracuse, the board also considered the following agenda items:

SYRACUSE — Proposed changes to high school diploma requirements are pending before the state board of education. During the regular monthly meeting of the school board for the Wawasee Community School Corp. Tuesday evening, Oct. 13, in Syracuse, the board heard a report from Joy Goshert, director of instruction and curriculum.

MILFORD — Wednesday, Oct. 7, Milford School participated in National Walk to School Day.

SYRACUSE — During the regular monthly meeting Tuesday, Oct. 13, of the school board for the Wawasee Community School Corp., among the agenda items will be consideration of the renewal of the contract for Dr. Tom Edington, superintendent.

For the first time in five years, teachers within the Wawasee Community School Corp. will be getting a pay raise. During a special meeting of the Wawasee school board Tuesday evening, Sept. 22, in Syracuse the board approved a 3.5 percent increase to the base salary for teachers.

A special and brief meeting was held late Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 25, by the Wawasee school board in Syracuse for the main purpose of a budget hearing. The budget process continues to move forward and Tuesday’s meeting was a public hearing, though no public input was given.

A legislative study committee will convene in October to find answers to a problem Indiana is facing with a shortage of newly licensed teachers. But ask Dr. Tom Edington, superintendent of the Wawasee Community School Corp., and other administrators, and they likely already know what the committee will find.

To borrow a phrase used by George Gilbert of the Wawasee school board, it was only the first day of school and there was already a student learning report.

A special Wawasee school board meeting was held the evening of Tuesday, July 28, in Syracuse for the main purpose of a budget workshop and to start the formal budget process for 2016.

It’s a little easier now to visualize what the new Syracuse Elementary School can possibly look like. During the regular monthly meeting of the Wawasee Community School Corp. Board of School Trustees Tuesday evening, July 14, in Syracuse, the board was presented an update on the progression of plans for the new school.

Other agenda items considered by the Wawasee school board during its regular monthly meeting Tuesday, June 9, in Syracuse included: • Dr. Tom Edington, superintendent of the Wawasee Community School Corp., noted the high school building trades projects for the next two school years will be a joint effort between Wawasee and Fairfield, with help …read more.

Just what the new Syracuse Elementary School will look like is becoming more clear. During the regular monthly meeting of the Wawasee school board Tuesday evening, June 9, in Syracuse, the board heard a brief update on the design phase of the building from Brian Bohlander, architect for Barton-Coe-Vilamaa. Bohlander said much progress has been …read more.

Board members of the Syracuse Parks Foundation assembled Thursday evening to hear updates on projects by the Syracuse Parks Department and the Syracuse-Wawasee Trail Committee. In a brief session, Dr. Tom Edington addressed the board with details about the trails project along Harkless Road. Edington reported the trail is near completion “coming in under budget.” …read more.

More than 70 Wawasee area residents assembled Wednesday evening at Calvary United Methodist to hear about plans for a new elementary school in Syracuse. Dr. Tom Edington, superintendent of Wawasee Community School Corporation, presented the details in the second installment of the Calvary Community Series sponsored by the church. “We have a plan for our …read more.

Students at Milford Elementary School returned to school Friday for a third day without potable water from the school drinking fountains. According to assistant principal Ryan Connor, early Wednesday morning staff noticed water at the southeast end of the elementary school. Upon further inspection by staff, the leak was caused by a break in the …read more.

According to a projected timeline, a new Syracuse Elementary School will open by the fall of 2017. When that occurs, it will leave a nearly 100,000 square-foot facility empty of students. During a public meeting held late Monday afternoon in the lecture room of Wawasee High School, suggestions were offered on how the current Syracuse …read more.

ISTEP+ has been plagued with difficulties especially the last few years and those difficulties are apparently not a thing of the past. During the regular monthly meeting of the Wawasee School Board Tuesday evening in Syracuse, the board heard a report from Joy Goshert, director of instruction and curriculum, about concerns with online ISTEP+ testing. …read more.

Dr. Bob Cockburn, during his Stat of the Month report to the Wawasee school board Tuesday evening, talked briefly about Northwest Evaluation Association growth data. He compiled statistics showing how students performed from the fall of 2011 to the fall of 2012, the fall of 2012 to the fall of 2013 and the fall of …read more.

As part of the regular monthly meeting of the Wawasee school board Tuesday evening in Syracuse, a 1028 Hearing was held in conjunction with the new Syracuse Elementary School to be built off Kern Road. Such a hearing is required by state law for a project of this scope. Building a new Syracuse Elementary will …read more.

On Thursday, the state announced the awarding of $30 million to more than 1,300 schools to reward high-performing teachers in the first such distribution of teacher performance grants. But because the Wawasee Community School Corp. does not have its new teacher pay system in place, it was not eligible to receive any of the state funding. …read more.

Most Fridays during the school year, some 320 Wawasee students in grades kindergarten through fifth are sent home with backpacks containing food items. Food is provided to children enrolled in the federal free and reduced lunch program. More precisely, the backpacks are part of the Boomerang Backpack program, which started in the East Noble school …read more.

After the regular school board meeting Tuesday in Syracuse, the board held a work session and heard a report from Dr. Tom Edington, superintendent of the Wawasee Community School Corp., about possible construction projects within the next year or two and several years later. During the regular meeting, the board approved purchasing land from the …read more.

A substantial financial gift from an anonymous Wawasee patron could literally benefit the Wawasee Community School Corp. for a period of 100 years. During a special meeting of the Wawasee school board Tuesday in Syracuse, the board voted to approve the gift. A business is being sold into a limited partnership to include the Wawasee …read more.

A decision has been made by administrators of the Wawasee Community School Corp. to build a new Syracuse Elementary School somewhere, but exactly where has not been finalized yet. Since November, discussions have been held with the Eagles organization in Syracuse and Sunday the local Eagles membership voted to approve selling 15 acres of Eagles …read more.

Recent decisions made by the Indiana State Board of Education appear to have minimal impact on Wawasee schools, at least for the foreseeable future. The state board voted to adopt rules to establish how K-12 teachers, staff and administrators obtain licenses or permits. A career specialist permit, a two-year renewable license for secondary level teachers, …read more.

A few years ago the Wawasee Community School Corp. implemented several energy saving measures and has been utilizing Indianapolis-based Performance Services to monitor energy costs. During Tuesday evening’s regular monthly meeting of the school board in Syracuse, the board heard a brief report on just how much money is being saved from Mike Lindsey of …read more.

In the legal notices section of this week’s The Mail-Journal, readers are encouraged to view the 2013 annual performance report of the Wawasee Community School Corp. It is essentially a “snapshot” of the corporation and contains data pulled by the Indiana Department of Education obtained from multiple reports submitted to IDOE. An annual performance report …read more.

It has been made abundantly clear, more than once, that Wawasee administrators place much more value on Northwest Evaluation Association testing results than ISTEP+. Dr. Tom Edington, Wawasee Community School Corp., summed it up by saying, “We use NWEA results to help teachers teach better, but we give the ISTEP+ because of political reasons.” It …read more.

Common Core curriculum, a state standards initiative, is attracting more attention statewide. Some support the curriculum, while others have numerous concerns. Common Core is a state-led effort establishing a single set of clear educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English, language arts and math that states voluntarily adopt. Leading the Common Core effort …read more.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a reporting error, Dr. Tom Edington offered this clarification for the article: “(Board) Attorney David Cates filled in the board about possibilities for moving forward with the school resource officer pilot program at Milford School this fall,” explained Edington. “He is planning to work out further details with Milford town attorney …read more.

The four-bus chain reaction accident one week ago today on SR 13 north of North Webster, was one no one in emergency services has seen during their careers and no one wants to experience again. While physical injuries are on the mend, the emotional trauma may take time to heal. The accident occurred at 3:30 …read more.

The following is a letter Wawasee Community School Corporation Superintendent Dr. Tom Edington sent to Wawasee parents regarding last Wednesday’s accident involving four school buses. The letter has also been posted on the corporation’s website: Thank you to all Wawasee individuals who helped last Wednesday with the school bus accident. Community members and school parents …read more.

In less than a year, the massive, and sometimes controversial, federal health care legislation will take full effect. How it will specifically affect the Wawasee Community School Corp. is not fully known yet, but the school board did hear a presentation on what is known so far during its regular monthly meeting Tuesday evening in …read more.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Stacey Page contributed to this report.) Wawasee Community Schools has been served with legal papers, but the school’s policy, according to superintendent Dr. Tom Edington, is to not comment on pending litigation. The lawsuit was filed on Jan. 31 by Donny Griffith of 11465 N. E. Wawasee Dr., Syracuse. This morning we have …read more.

[weaver_youtube HU4qj0SFLsQ rel=0] (EDITOR’S NOTE: Mail-Journal Reporter Tim Ashley contributed to this update.) “You can’t help people that don’t want to help themselves. But I’m telling you, if you reach out and ask for help, you have people who want to sit there and listen.” That is the message youth motivational speaker and teen and …read more.

Patience will be needed for spectators and those involved with swimming teams or programs at the Wawasee Middle School Natatorium. Extensive renovations have been completed (though a few items remain unfinished) within the last few months and it will take some time before the full effect is known. Anyone who has attended a high school …read more.

It would take too long to pay off, so the Wawasee Community School Corp. Board of Trustees voted not to have geothermal installed at Wawasee Middle School. The vote was taken during a special meeting of the school board late Tuesday afternoon in the Warrior Room at Wawasee High School. The board had been considering …read more.