Vantage BOE wraps up fiscal year

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent editor

Finances and personnel matters were the focus of this month’s second meeting of the Vantage Career Center Board of Education, which was held Thursday evening.

The meeting was considered the July meeting but it was scheduled a few days before the new month to close out fiscal year 2025, which the board did. Board members also approved permanent revenues and appropriations for fiscal year 2026 as presented by Treasurer Denise Mooney. The board also approved several routine transfers.

A list of dozens of adult education instructors were approved on an as-needed basis for the 2025-2026 school year and the board accepted the resignation of cafeteria manager Penny Baucom, who was recently hired by the Lincolnview Local Schools. The board also accepted the resignation of Harley Pajari, adult education nursing instructor, along with the retirement-resignation of Mary Ann Falk, technology integration specialist, effective October 27. 

Superintendent Rick Turner informed the board that last Wednesday’s storm left Vantage without electricity until Sunday evening.

“We want to thank the AEP crews and contractors for working through extreme heat to ensure we had power to start this week,” he said. “We also want to thank Vantage maintenance supervisor Kyle Hammons and his team for monitoring the building, ensuring the generator had fuel, and dialoging with me and AEP crews throughout the outage for a coordinated effort to get our systems back online. We also appreciate our IT Supervisor, Luke Compton and his team for ensuring all of our technologies were functioning properly and addressing some minor issues as a result of the outage.”

“We are thankful our buildings and grounds were undamaged by the severe weather,” he added.

Turner also told the board the fire training facility is assembled, and work continues on the future medical academy.

The board learned from High School Director Ben Winans that final acceptance letters have been mailed out to 300 new students for the upcoming school year.

“This will bring our expected enrollment to 585 students, which is approximately where we were at this time last year,” Winans stated. “Our adminstrative team is working through creating the master schedule and plans to have this completed in the next couple weeks. As we have discussed we are planning for high enrollment which creates more difficulty in creating the academic schedule. We are confident that we can create a schedule that will not only meet the academic needs of the larger number of students, but also work well for our teaching staff.”

He also explained that once the schedule is finalized school officials will move to the “pilot” program Vantage is considering for this school year. It will offer students on the waiting list an opportunity to attend Vantage for their career tech lab and their associate school for their academics.

“I want to be clear this will not eliminate our waiting list, as the schedules, transportation and such will have to line up,” Winans said. “However, it is an option to still allow students in our district to receive training in the career tech field of their choice.”

Among the agenda items approved by the board: student handbooks for the new school year, several out-of-state trips and a purchase agreement for the sale of Vantage’s spec house on Second St. in Van Wert.

“The students did an amazing job constructing this home. A good number of them attended the auction,” Turner said. “They are very proud of their work, as they well should be. Many thanks to the Van Wert County Land Bank and Van Wert Economic Development for their partnership with us on this project. We also want to thank Schrader Reality for an excellent job promoting and conducting the auction.”

The next meeting of the Vantage Career Center Board of Education will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, August 7, in the district conference room.