D49 Board approves personnel items
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NASHVILLE — The Nashville School District 49 Board approved the employment of Pamala Smith as a paraprofessional for the 2025-2026 school year at its Aug. 28 meeting.
Superintendent Mike Brink said Smith will be taking the place of Summer Crunk. He said Smith has already started and is doing an awesome job. Brink said she is driving a regular bus route for Robinson too and her current paraprofessional position works out perfectly with that.
The board approved the employment of Ashley Melvin as a permanent substitute teacher for the 2025-2026 school year. Brink said Melvin has already started and that will give them four permanent subs in the building all day which is tremendous. He said Melvin is willing to do about anything and she helped out in the autism room for the first week or so. He said Melvin has had a lot of experience and is doing a really good job.
The board approved the employment of Victoria O’Neal as a part-time receptionist for the 2025-2026 school year. Brink said O’Neal lives in Nashville and has several kids at the school. Brink said she worked alongside Sandra Spencer for the first two or three days to get used to the system and how that all operates. Brink said O’Neal has been on her own for several days and she’ll be working three days a week and Spencer will be two days a week.
The board approved letters of resignation from Summer Crunk and Kala Spangenberg. Brink said Crunk had put her resignation notice in the day of the last school board meeting, which he could not get on the agenda last month. Brink said Spangenberg had put hers in a couple days after the last school board meeting. He said Crunk ended up getting a teaching position at ALA in Mount Vernon.
Brink said they had two more retirements: Karen Bunker in May 2027 and Denise Czajkowski in May 2028. He said they’re hovering around 11 or 12 retirements over the next four years, certified and non-certified, so plenty of work to do over the next four years.
“We’ve been very fortunate with paras and permanent subs. We’re completely fully staffed right now, so we’ll get an early start when we need to and go from there,” Brink said.
The board approved the 2025-2025 substitute list. Brink said it hasn’t changed a whole lot since last year other than the addition of Cheryl Ruggles. He said they’re heavily reliant on retired teachers from Nashville School District 49.
Principal Travis Schmale said the four permanent subs help. He said they have a few people at the beginning of the year especially who are maybe out for a little bit or unavailable on the list, but they’ll be available shortly.
The board set the fiscal year 2026 budget hearing for Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. Brink said that’ll take place right before the next school board meeting and he’ll go over the budget at that time.
Enrollment-wise, Brink said they’re at 560 students for K-8 and the 17-year average is a little over 517, so they’re certainly over average. He said if you throw in preschool and ECE, they can add another 59 onto that, so this is the top two, three or maybe four enrollments in history. He said that’s after losing a rather large eighth grade class. He said kindergarten hung tough until about a week before school or less and they’re hovering at 65, so it’s still manageable.
“That’s the one we were concerned about, but the vast majority came from our preschool. We’re well over the 17-year average. We expect another large kindergarten group next year, so I’d expect it to maintain or rise,” Brink said.
Brink said for the most part the roofing is done. He said the roofers were back a little bit doing some things with the gas lines and they still don’t have a date yet for completion for the two HVAC units. He said they were really hoping it’d be Labor Day weekend but it’s not going to be for the two HVAC units.
“We’re going to shoot for the longer weekend in mid-October. We’re hoping that can maybe get done. It’s not necessarily a rush per se, but it’d be nice to wrap this up. It’s gone fine, but that’s the hold up right now,” Brink said.
The board approved the payment of bills.
Brink said there are three larger ticket items that are not normal. He said they try to do the parking lots every other year at a minimum and it really needed it this year. He said they had gone a couple years without doing it, so that was around $26,000. He said they try to do the gym floors every summer to keep those looking nice, which was around $6,200. He said the payment to Kehrer Roofing was a large chunk of the overall contract. He said the overall contract was $595,000 and this bill was about $469,000.
“There is still some hanging out there. We will not release the rest of it until there’s a substantial completion report done after the inspections and making sure everything is completely good to go. There is still a little over $100,000 left with that,” Brink said.
Brink said they just got their preliminary special ed IDEA report. He said the district ranked extremely high and they’re at “meets requirements,” which is the highest they can be at. He said they strive for that every year, so that was excellent news. He said they got their yearly email from ISBE for the Accelerate program and that is the ranking system for the preschool program. He said they got what’s known as the gold circle of quality, which is the highest they can get. He said they got their two-day audit this past year, so that’s also excellent news.
“I followed up with Yvette Kostecki. She, through her business, donated 25 backpacks that were jam packed with school supplies and calculators. That was very cool. We do get a lot of those donations, but this one was new and very neat,” Brink said.
Schmale reported that the school year has gotten off to a great start and everyone has been very welcoming to him and he is enjoying it. He said it was awesome to see these first few weeks that the staff is great at stepping up and helping the kindergarteners and newer and older kids as they learn procedures again and how quickly the kids get back into everything and know what they’re doing.
“I’m pleased with how the school year is starting and how welcoming people have been to me. It has been great so far,” Schmale said.
Brink said Seth Swoboda is on KSED as the rep right now. He said they had a meeting when the District 49 Board had their meeting so Swoboda couldn’t attend.
“I went to the executive board and voted this morning on the budget. If anyone is interested, the next meeting is in March, so plenty of time to mull that over,” Brink said.
Brink reported that Amanda Jack started back at work last Saturday and has been cleared to start back. Brink said she has requested and will do an awesome job to go ahead and take Annette Harper’s position at the middle school library and cover the art class she did.
“We’re pretty happy with that. She really wanted to do that and keep that flowing. She has got a little experience down there with that. She came in today and by next week, she’s planning to have that up and running,” Brink said.
Schmale said they’ve completed three of the required drills for the year. He said they did the lockdown drill on Aug. 15, the first fire drill on Aug. 18, and the bus evacuation drill on Aug. 21. He said they have a few more drills to do for the year and they have two more fire and one severe weather drill to get done. He said they have the student council selling Strong for Stella bracelets to benefit Stella Wernowsky.
“They sold out so we have to get more and we’re going to try to sell some more again so that’s going over very well for a very good cause,” Schmale said.
Schmale said their “Strikeout Cancer” baseball and softball game against Okawville on Sept. 8 is also going to benefit Stella Wernowsky.
“Those raffle tickets are $5 and they start going on sale shortly,” Schmale said.
Schmale said the student council is also continuing their Hats Off For Cancer and you can donate $1 to wear a hat on Fridays to benefit Relay for Life. He said the midterm of the first quarter is Sept. 12, so that’s right around the corner and time is flying already.
