CWC School Board Discusses Budget and Incident Related to Illinois State Board of Education – WRUL-FM

On Monday evening, the Carmi White County School Board held a marathon meeting. Instead of passing the budget for the 2025 fiscal year, the meeting focused on an incident in which a child was given a “time out” in a closet as punishment. Scott Mareing was there and has this report…

David Lovell and his wife Minerva were present at the meeting and David spoke to the board about the incident involving their son during public communication

“I’m just curious, is the board more concerned about his status or the children who go there because the education they were getting there was obviously not right. RTO, I asked you to file a complaint but you didn’t file it. You picked up a little boy, locked him in a cupboard and slammed the door in his face, simple as that. When we were at the other schools, I don’t know what the difference was, we worked with them, we had problems with my son, we got along with them, never had this problem and suddenly we go to a new school and have this problem. It’s been a problem all year. From comments to: we don’t want to take your son anywhere because we don’t want to be responsible for him, we’re going to exclude him from everything. I think you had a teacher slap a student last year and I think she still works there.”

In September, a complaint was filed with the Illinois State Board of Education following an incident at the Washington Attendance Center in which a child was restrained and taken to a separate room. The child’s parents filed the complaint and had previously requested a meeting to discuss the situation. The entire incident was witnessed by multiple people and recorded by a School Resource Officer on a body camera. The Washington Attendance Center was found guilty by the Illinois State Board of Education.

Minerva Lovell had asked the board about a home-bound program, designed for students who are unable to attend school for four or more weeks during the school year due to health reasons. School board chair Nathan Whetstone said they would explore that option.

One of the items discussed during the closed session, which lasted two hours and eight minutes, was Mr. Lovell’s potential denial of access to school events or grounds. The board voted to deny him access for one calendar year, with a written decision on the specifics expected shortly.

The meeting began with a hearing on the amended budget, where the numbers were reviewed without board members asking questions, so the hearing ended after only four minutes.

The regular session then began.

The budget was approved and will show a gain of $650,448 over the last fiscal year, with total revenues from all funds estimated at $21,773,499 and expenditures at $21,123,051.

The Board accepted the recommendation of Bushue’s Human Resources Department to renew the district’s commercial and workers’ compensation insurance, extending last year’s coverage with Wright Specialty Insurance, CFC, Gerber Life and AIG for one year.

Approval was granted to accept local and/or public bids for summer maintenance projects totaling $135,186 at Lincoln School and $242,100 at Washington School.

In the superintendent’s report, Jarrod Newell said that the building management and central office staff are busy ordering and receiving supplies, materials and equipment for the upcoming school year. Equipment is being updated by the technical staff. The various buildings are being cleaned and repaired.

Chief Jason Carter of the Carmi Police Department gave an update on the School Resource Officer program

“Around the last week of January/first week of February we were able to bring the second School Resource Officer to the school full-time. So for a few months we had both School Resource Officers working full-time at all schools. The feedback I got was consistently positive.”

The Consent Agenda was approved, which included recognition of the second semester Board Scholars, donations of $5,100, and approval of the Consolidated District Plan.

The board went into closed session at 7:39 p.m. When they returned over two hours later at 9:47 p.m., in addition to the decision regarding David Lovell, they approved that written minutes of the closed session held on December 18, 2023 (date of last review through May 20, 2024) remain under seal; that audio recordings for regular and closed board meetings held July 18, 2022 through December 19, 2022 be destroyed in accordance with the local records law; that retirements, hires and resignations be accepted as listed in Appendix A; and that the superintendent’s contract be extended for five years from July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2029.