Brunswick City Schools Board of Education revises and adopts policies at meeting

BRUNSWICK — The Brunswick Schools Board of Education adopted a new math curriculum Monday night. During the school board's meeting last month, math teachers provided information to the board on best practices for the subject. The new curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grade will be enVision Math from Savvas. Grades six through eight will use Reveal Math from McGraw Hill for algebra, geometry and algebra 2. "It's robust," Brunswick Superintendent Jason Niedermeyer said. "It's going to help our students from an intervention standpoint, from an enrichment standpoint and I know that our teachers are really ready to get that going." The school board made revisions to other board policies, as well. Niedermeyer said these policies are altered when the law is modified. These changes affect how principals and other administrators will be evaluated. Adjustments were also made to the alternative remediation-free information for the college credit plus program. The definition of blended learning became more robust and included a new rule that these programs must have an instructional calendar of at least 910 hours. Lastly, the early graduation policy was revised to reflect changes in testing requirements. "The one thing that changes every single year is the requirements of our graduating seniors, so we want to make sure that our policy falls in line with those expectations," Niedermeyer said. Payment in lieu of transportation was approved for students attending other accredited schools within 30 minutes of travel time that are considered impractical. "If we have one student that's going somewhere and they're 29 minutes away, the district can declare that to be impractical for us to take an 80 passenger bus to get that student out to that building," Niedermeyer said. The school board also accepted more than $14,000 worth of donations for the upcoming inclusive playground project. The biggest donor was St. Ambrose Parish, which donated $10,000 from its fish fry. "This is just another example of what makes Brunswick such a great school community," Niedermeyer said. "The outpouring of support from people all over our community, supporting the programs here just makes Brunswick a really special place. So thank you to all those organizations." Contact reporter Madisyn Woodring at (330) 721-4049 or mwoodring@medina-gazette.com.