SW Dubois County School Board meeting: Sickbert new Southridge principal
Southridge High School’s new assistant principal was appointed at the Southwest Dubois County School Board meeting Thursday night.
Chad Sickbert will take the spot vacated by Kelly Murphy when he was named principal. High School Agriculture Teacher.
Chad Sickbert, the vocational agriculture teacher for the high school, was introduced in Thursday night’s Southwest Dubois School Board meeting. He has been with Southridge High School for four years as a teacher
Sickbert is a 1995 Forest Park graduate and attended Purdue University where he graduated with an Agriculture Education major and a biology minor. He then graduated from Oakland City University with a Masters in Education Administration. The 36-year-old Sickbert has taught for 14 years — 10 at Warrick County Public Schools, and the rest at Southridge.
Sickbert acknowledges the challenges with new personnel in the school system, “It is an exciting time, you know, we’ve got a new administration all the way up to our superintendent. We’ve got a beautiful new school that everyone’s really proud of, so it’s kind of an exciting time.”
Sickbert, who has his adminstrator’s license, is a natural fit. According to Superintendent Mike Eineman Sickbert is a great candidate. “He’s well educated and he has a good background, (and) has a very good demeanor. He’s done a great job with our FAA program and our Ag classes – hate to see him leave there, but, you know we feel like he’s going to be an addition to us and a plus to us in the administration.”[hr]
In other business the board voted to approve the purchase of iPad Minis for the second grade. The topic was tabled in last month’s meeting so that Council Member Christopher Neu could study the issue and gather input from teachers and administrators along with IT professionals in the community on the best direction for the school system technology initiative.
Holland Elementary Principal Sarah Bardwell told the Board that the second grade teachers have been preparing themselves for the addition of the iPads in their curriculum this year, which made a strong case for the purchase and deployment now, rather than waiting another year.
Neu was agreeable to the deployment, and further agreed with Bardwell that a long term strategy for technology integration needs to be established and implemented. He made a motion to approve the purchase of the iPads at $384.00 each with the stipulation that no other technology purchases over $5,000 be made this school year.
In the end, he agreed to amend his stipulation to read that Eineman could replace technology at his discretion after hearing concerns about replacing inoperable and obsolete equipment.
Neu is adamant on getting a long-term technology plan in place as soon as possible. He had a meeting Tuesday night with school system employees and community members with IT backgrounds and they agreed that the decision about whether to purchase Apple products or go another direction is causing concern. “We almost feel like we’re back 30 years (ago) when it was Betamax or VHS,” Neu said. “What do you do? You got to make a decision and the kicker is that you’re going to live with that decision for three to four years.”[hr]
In other news, the board approved an engineering services contract for IT services with Five-Star Technology Solutions out of Sellersburg. Five Star provides IT services for school systems and Karen Kippenbrock was at the meeting to represent the company. The board approved the contract.
Finally, Superintendent Eineman said that no replacement has been chosen for former Assistant to the Superintendent Chad Schenck. Eineman said, “we’re going to replace the position. It won’t be that specific title for the position, but we will look to someone inside to possibly do the transportation part, help out with licensure, personnel, things like that.”
