New sign to go up at Eisenhower

Apr. 25—OTTUMWA — The Ottumwa Community School District Board of Education, with barely enough members for a quorum at Monday's meeting at Career Campus, unanimously approved a new sign to go up outside of Eisenhower Elementary School.

On a 4-0 vote, the board voted to continue a trend of replacing older signs with more modern ones on its school sites. The one at Eisenhower, which has a 16-week lead time, should arrive in mid-August. The 12-foot tall sign will have a video display, as well as an automatic dim mechanism so oncoming traffic isn't blinded.

The district has already replaced signs at the high school and Evans Middle School. The new sign at Eisenhower will go mostly in the same spot at the current one, but a little closer to the sidewalk.

"This location is a very highly visible location for some of our district branching. We're going to reuse the existing electrical that's there from the current sign," district technology directly Landon Allen said. "We want to make the name as visible as possible."

The sign will be red background with "Eisenhower Elementary" in white lettering, and the display below the name. Messages on the sign can be controlled from the administration office as well as the school.

"The sign we have is in pretty poor shape and it's kind of leaning a bit," superintendent Mike McGrory said. "I think the reason we picked Eisenhower was that it's a prominent area and it will allow us to advertise a lot of things for our district.

"I also think one of our goals is to also do community advertising and advertising the things the community needs as well. It's in an area that we feel parents will appreciate the information."

In other business:

— The board approved a switch in service to Relay for Medicaid billing services. For years, the district had Timberline, but moving to Relay will help streamline the process and eliminate some of the tedious work of the billing process.

"Imagine going from Netscape Navigator and dial-up internet to high-speed internet at no additional cost to us," said Mike Stiemsma, the district's nursing coordinator, to chuckles from the board. "The platform has a real-time dashboard, so we can actually keep track of how we're doing on our Medicaid billing as a district, which we've never been able to do.

"It also syncs to PowerSchool. There won't be any more manual checks, and it'll save us a lot of secretarial work on the back end. Right now we're doing paper logs, and that really does make me nervous."

The district takes in about $1 million a year in Medicaid reimbursements, so it is a big source of revenue. However, Stiemsma said "some switches in databases on the state end has made it really difficult to identify the students who are Medicaid eligible."

"Relay is a more robust system for finding those students, so we're hoping we can actually increase that number, which will allow us to hire additional nursing staff."

— In his report, McGrory said at the board's first meeting in May (May 8), there will be a discussion about the phased approach to remodeling to the high school, starting with a competition gym.

"We're going to be sharing how we're moving forward with our high school remodel, and we're going to kind of go over how the process is going to work and what the different phases will be," he said. "We're really excited to be starting this process now, and really looking forward to making a major remodeling at the high school."

— He also commended senior Roderick Rath on writing the musical "11 O'Clock The Musical," which was performed four times over the weekend.

"It was really special because I've never been a part of where a student has actually written a musical for his school. It was really well done," he said. "The kids were so impressive, and it was just a great experience. I want to think director Jeff Leonard for all his hard work, and his willingness to work with our students and provide that opportunity for them."

— There will be a funeral service for the late Nicole King Saturday at 10 a.m. at the high school. King, an OHS graduate and longtime elementary teacher in the district, died April 16 at age 54. Recently, she sought to renovate a building on East Main Street and turn it into what she called the "Main Street Schoolhouse." A meal will follow the service.

— Chad Drury can be reached at cdrury@ottumwacourier.com, and on Twitter @ChadDrury