Positions filled at Steeleville school board meeting

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The new Spanish and P.E. teachers were named at the monthly Steeleville school board meeting that took place on Monday, July 20.

Alice Decker was approved by the board as the new Spanish teacher for the upcoming year. Steeleville plans to use a virtual Spanish class that will be done on computers.

The Steeleville board accepted the resignation letter of Carl Zumbahlen and in turn approved Cody Hiller to be employed as the new high school P.E. teacher because Zumbahlen is leaving.

In other news, Prairie Farms and IBC Wonder Bread each won their bids to become what Steeleville uses in their cafeteria for milk and bread products. Prairie Farms beat out Chester Dairy and IBC Wonder Bread beat out Louis Bakery.

Also at the meeting, Jill Dare was approved as the consulting services for Erate filings. She will get paid 10% of whatever the school gets from Erate.

In other news it was decided that breakfast and lunch prices will remain the same for at least the first quarter of the new school year. It was reported that lunch service was down about twenty-three meals a day from last year to the year before. Grade School Principal and District Superintendent Stephanie Mulholland said that this could primarily be because it seems that kids in the younger grades were bringing their lunches more. Mulholland said that they do not want to have to change prices, but they will review the situation after the first quarter.

In other news, the elementary and high school student handbooks were approved for the upcoming year with a small add-on to it. Mulholland said that they had a couple of issues with the dress code last year so she wanted to make sure it gets emphasized in the handbook. It will now say that if students are wearing shorts that are higher than their pinky finger when their arms are at their sides, then they are too high. It was also mentioned that this will be the last year with the 5.0 grading scale; after that both the grade school and high school will each be using the 4.0 scale.

The board also approved book rental and fees for the upcoming school year. All the prices will remain the same, except $15 will be added for Sociology.

Several athletic coaching jobs were approved for the upcoming year as well. Andy Gerlach and Charlie Cagle were approved as the grade school softball coaches, and Bill Grafton and John Sutton were approved as the grade school baseball coaches. Valerie Bohnert was approved as the girl's golf coach and Cody Hiller was approved as the boy's golf coach.