Tharp to begin teacher career at Central Elementary

Evelyn Tharp will begin her teaching career a little sooner than she probably anticipate.

Tharp was approved by the South Putnam school board at its regularly scheduled recently. Tharp, who is finishing up her degree at Indiana State University, has been doing her student-teaching at Central Elementary in Tammy York’s first-grade class.

Now Tharp will be filling in for Ashley Robinson’s fourth-grade class for the remainder of the school year. Tharp will graduate from Indiana State in December but was allowed to come work for Central Elementary as ISU approved the request.

The board also received more updates regarding the work being done on the athletic fields by Doug Rambo.

“We’re pretty much 99 percent done with what we need to do,” Rambo said. “To the casual eye they won’t be able to notice any difference but there are some very small things we’re still waiting for delivery on. One of those is the electrical upgrades that still need to be finalized. We’re really excited to put all of the new lighting in for the softball, baseball and track in the spring.”

Rambo also noted how the roof and the new fieldhouse projects are still on-going while there’s not much to report on the new pool project as they wait on more deliveries to come in.

The board did approve two resolutions with the bus replacement resolution being a five-year resolution lasting from 2025-2029 and the capital projects resolution which is a three-year resolution lasting from 2025-2027.

In other business the board:

• Approved the 2025 budget, tax rates and levies.

• Approved the adoption to approve reduction in appropriations.

• Approved the adoption of resolution to transfer funds from education fund to operations fund.

• Approved the adoption of resolution to transfer appropriations within a fund.

• Had a first hearing on the preliminary determination of $3 million general obligation bond with no public comment. The second hearing will be on Wednesday Oct. 23 at 6 p.m. in the South Putnam Media Center.

“The goal is to use this money for a variety of different things,” Supt. Corey Smith said. “Whether that be infrastructure, playground upgrades, technology improvements etc., there’s so much that we could use this money for.”

• Approved the resolution to authorize the issuance of individual procurement cards (BMO).

• Approved the corporation NEOLA Policy Updates.

• Approved the Fillmore Elementary library book surplus.

• Approved the proposal for design services for the new administration building project and have Fanning-Howey Architects selected as the designee for the project.

“This is project is still in the potential phase of things,” Smith stated to the board. “We do however, would like to recommend Fanning-Howey because of their excellent work with our track and field and pool upgrades and many others. Fanning-Howey as you well know has extensive pedigree in the public-school arena as well as administrative buildings.”

“The overall design process should only be a couple of months. We do want to get through our other big on-going projects before getting this ball rolling.”

• Approved a number of personnel items.

Resignations: Valerie Walters as CES Instructional Assistant, Lillian Turner as SPMHS Food Service

Terminations: Amy Justice as SPMHS Custodian

New Hires: Juleena Cox as community PK instructional assistant at FES, Rhonda Fisher as food services, Ron Knight as custodian, Tiffany Trissel as sub bus driver and Edward Barnett as custodian at SPMHS

Substitutes: Cindy Poindexter as sub custodian, Melissa Dunca as sub teacher, Tiffany Trissel at sub bus driver and Sabrina Leonard as sub teacher

Transfers: Adam Timcheck from FES instructional assistant to substitute teacher

The next regular scheduled meeting of the South Putnam School board is set for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20 at the media center of SPHS.