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Centralia High School waiving 1st semester exams for students with passing grades

By News Nov 24, 2020 | 2:45 PM

Centralia High School students who are passing their first and second quarter classes won’t be required to take first semester exams.

Superintendent Chuck Lane outlined the procedure at Monday night’s meeting.

“We decided to make the first semester exams optional. Each student will still be getting a review sheet from their teachers for that class that covers the entire first semester. So their still going to have to work on the review sheet, but they will only take the final exam if they were failing the class one quarter or they wanted to take it to improve their final grade.”

Lane says the first semester exams are set for December 15th, 16th, and 17th. He expects school to continue into the new semester on the same modified schedule until there is a change in the status of the pandemic.

After the meeting Lane says he thought the school had done a pretty good job regulating COVID. He says they are actually starting to get some staff members back and knock on wood, they are in pretty good shape right now.

Lane says the winter sports seasons and after school activities have been put on hold.

“Coaches and Directors are allowed one on one work with one individual student. So you can have one coach or one director with one student, and that student only. So a big difference between what we were used to, so trying to take a positive from that maybe and see what happens at the beginning of the year to see where we are with that.”

Lane said the IHSA is set to reevaluate the postponement of the winter sports programs on December 2nd and 14th.

The board discussed the annual tax levy, with Lane telling the board that the district is only requesting about a 2.44 percent increase over this year’s collections and he does not expect the district to get that amount. The levy will not be up for approval until next month’s meeting.

Lane announced the school’s financial profile improved from 2.9 to 3.35. He said the school ‘is really good’.

In personnel action, the board was told November 16 of the retirement of part-time cafeteria worker Veronica Garrett and part-time custodial worker Daniel Pierson has resigned as of November 30th. The board moved to employ Alexia Barr as cheerleading coach and Hannah Reed, assistant cheerleading coach for the 2020-2021 school year.