Community Schools of Frankfort - page 2

FRANKFORT, Ind, – The Frankfort School Board took a step towards updating the district attendance policy at its Tuesday meeting by approving the High School and Elementary schools (Blue Ridge, Green Meadows and Suncrest) attendance policies, while the Middle School had not yet submitted its plan. The Middle School plan should be ready at the next board meeting September 13.

Over the past two-years CSF has not been able to do much in terms of enforcement of an attendance policy due to Covid-19. However, now that many of those restrictions have been removed, the district is wanting to have students in school for instruction.

“There was not much over the past two years that we could do about attendance,” said CSF Superintendent Dr. Matt Rhoda after the meeting. “We had to be pretty flexible.”

“Coming into this year, we want to get back to we need kids in the buildings. We want to be able to have expectations for parents of getting kids to school, but we also want to show that we’re going to help support them if there are some struggles. We want to be able to work out through a contract at day seven being missed about how we can help the kid get in the seat of the school.”

The school board’s proposed attendance plan offers a four-step, progressive notification process with the final step involving the matter being turned over to the county prosecutor for further action.

Dr. Rhoda explained the steps, “It’ll be five [misses] with a letter [home], seven [misses] will be a contract and 10 [misses] will be a certified letter to say, if, if you get to 11, you go to the county prosecutor.”

Parents will be notified of the attendance policy change via the district’s automated notification system.

FRANKFORT, Ind. – Karina Castaneda, a Frankfort High School Senior, received notification from the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair that her project – Strenuous Sequencing: Exploring the Effect of Bilingualism on Executive Functioning in the Human Brain – placed in the Top 20 of the Behavioral and Social Sciences category.

Castaneda, a member of the Class of 2021, was one of the 1,833 Regeneron ISEF 2021 finalists; representing 49 states and 64 countries across the world – a competition that was held virtually for the first time in its more than 70-year history to keep the finalists and their families safe during the ongoing pandemic.

“I was super excited, especially because we weren’t expecting it,” said Castaneda via a press release issued by the Community Schools of Frankfort. “Being from a small town, small state of Indiana in the United States, it was totally unexpected. So when I heard my name announced, it was very exciting!”

Although Castaneda’s projects for the past 5 years have centered on the bilingual brain, she started working on this year’s project back in September – during the peak of the pandemic while safety measures in place to protect students, staff, and teachers.

Something Bret Rhea, Director of High Ability at CSF, spoke about during the April 13, 2021, School Board meeting with respect to the challenges Castaneda had to overcome in completing her project.

“Probably the most impressive part of her project which was spurred by this year – the test that she used to assess the executive functioning is a neurological test called “trail making test” which is a paper and pencil test,” said Rhea to the School Board and public attendees. “Back in October, we were trying to figure out how can we test 600 middle schoolers if we can’t have them touching these pencils and papers. So she wrote a computer application – she basically self-taught herself how to write this application. She wrote the code and then we put it on flash drives and she would go into a classroom of kids and would plug them into their devices. The kids then were able to do the test she had made – on their computers – and the results were stored on the flash drives. And, no one contaminated anything. A very innovative thing.”

To qualify for the International competition, Castaneda had to compete at both Regional and State levels and finish with a designation that would allow her to advance.

At the Regional level in March, a 12-county area surrounding Lafayette, Castaneda won the best Behavioral Sciences project award and placed in the Top 3 of all projects in the contest advancing her to the State competition.

In April, she earned the mark of second-best Behavioral Sciences project as well as placed in the Top 20 of all projects in the contest in the State of Indiana – a designation that earned her a spot as a representative for Indiana to the International competition.

At ISEF, she was one of only six projects from Indiana to be recognized for excellence at the International level.

Below is the video submitted to ISEF by Castaneda, where she speaks about her project and findings.

Castaneda’s future education plans include attending Purdue University in the Fall of 2021 to study Business Management and later attend law school to become an attorney and practice family law.

In a special meeting of the Community Schools of Frankfort School Board held Tuesday, August 25, 2020, the School Board accepted a letter of retirement from Superintendent Don DeWeese Effective Friday, October 2, 2020.

The Board then approved a separation agreement between The Community Schools of Frankfort and Superintendent Don DeWeese. The specifics of the separation agreement has yet to be released.

DeWeese previously submitted his letter of retirement at the July 14, 2020, School Board meeting and the Board accepted with an effective date of January 11, 2021.

During the same July 14 meeting, the Board named current CSF Assistant Superintendent Joel McKinney to replace DeWeese as new Superintendent beginning January 12, 2021.

McKinney will begin serving as Interim Superintendent on October 3 until his official start as the next Superintendent of CSF on January 12, 2021.

In other business conducted during the special meeting, the School Board approved the creation of a new position and job description for a COVID-19 Assistant. This new position will be advertised to seek applicants. Currently, the task of tracking and performing contact tracing related to the pandemic within CSF falls on McKinney.