The Vantage Board of Education held their July Board meeting on Thursday, June 26, 2025 in the
District Conference Room. During the board meeting, Minutes from the June 5, 2025 regular board
meeting were approved along with financial statements for the month of May, 2025.
Superintendent Rick Turner welcomed the following guests to the meeting: Sam Shriver with The
Times Bulletin, Mr. Benjamin Winans, High School Director, Mrs. Angie Fahy, Adult Education Director,
Mrs. Ashley Cline, Supervisor of Student Operations, and Mrs. Sarah Koch, Social Studies Instructor.
Mr. Turner also spoke about and highlighted the following items at the meeting:
➢ We are asking you to approve the purchase agreement for the sale of our spec house on Second
Street. The students did an amazing job constructing this home. A good number of them attended
the auction. They are very proud of their work, as they well should be. Many thanks to the Van
Wert County Land Bank and Van Wert Economic Development for their partnership with us on this
project. We also want to thank Schrader Reality for an excellent job promoting and conducting the
auction.
➢ The storm that hit Van Wert last Wednesday evening left Vantage without electricity until Sunday
evening. We want to thank the AEP crews and contractors for working through extreme heat to
ensure we had power to start this week. We also want to thank Vantage maintenance supervisor,
Kyle Hammons, and his team for monitoring the building, ensuring the generator had fuel, and
dialoging with me and AEP crews throughout the outage for a coordinated effort to get our systems back online. We also appreciate our IT Supervisor, Luke Compton and his team for
ensuring all of our technologies were functioning properly and addressing some minor issues as a
result of the outage. We are thankful our buildings and grounds were undamaged by the severe
weather.
➢ The fire training facility is delivered and assembled. We are working with American Fire Training
Systems on punch list items and scheduling one day of train the trainer with our instructors. We
are also working to verify occupancy with Garmann Miller. Their structural engineer is reviewing
foundation information and will write a letter of issuance to the state when finished. We will then
be able to call for a final inspection of the structure.
➢ Work continues on our Medical Academy. We had a virtual meeting yesterday with Munger and
Associates and their mechanical engineering team to discuss Engineering Systems, with an
emphasis on technology and mechanical. The discussion included details on mechanical/electrical
equipment, security fob/PA/phones, and data. We also asked them to make a few minor changes
to the floor plan.
➢ In other work around the building, the floor in the Auto Tech lab has been coated. The installation
of the dust collector in the carpentry lab continues, and the parking lot mill and fill project has
been completed except for the truck driving academy portion, which is scheduled for next week.
➢ We continue to work to fill some open positions for next school year. These include a Math and an
English instructor as well as a Cafeteria Manager and a Technology Integration Specialist.
➢ Lastly, regarding the state biennium budget, the conference committee completed their work and
sent a proposed budget to the Governor yesterday. He will presumably have some items to veto
before signing into law to take effect July 1. The final version coming out of conference committee
more closely resembles the Senate version, which is what the CTE Superintendents were hoping
for as it appears a little more friendly to our priorities.
High School Director Benjamin Winans reported on the following:
➢ Final acceptance letters have been mailed out to just over 300 new students for the 2025-2026
school year. This will bring our expected enrollment to 585 students, which is approximately
where we were at this time last year. We continue to look to fill an open English and Math
position, which if we are able to fill will allow us to then accept a few more students from the
waiting list. Our admin team is working through creating the master schedule and plans to have
this completed in the next couple weeks. As we have discussed we are planning for high enrollment which creates more difficulty in creating the academic schedule. We are confident that
we can create a schedule that will not only meet the academic needs of the larger number of
students, but also work well for our teaching staff.
➢ Once the schedule is finalized we will then move to the “pilot” program we are looking at for this
school year which will offer students on the waiting list an opportunity to attend Vantage for their
Career Tech Lab and their associate school for their academics. I want to be clear this will not
eliminate our waiting list, as the schedules, transportation and such will have to line up. However,
it is an option to still allow students in our district to receive training in the career tech field of
their choice. I will continue to provide updates to you on how this “pilot” program runs
throughout the school year.
➢ Over the past month we have had groups of educators from both Paulding and Van Wert County
visit our building as they were engaged in the Economic Development activities which allow them
to visit not only our facilities but also local businesses to gain knowledge that they can share in
their classrooms. It was again a pleasure to have staff members from many of your local schools come in and see the opportunities we offer here at Vantage. Thanks to both the Paulding and Van
Wert County Economic Development groups for organizing these events.
➢ We were recently allocated our Federal Perkins Grant funds for the coming year. We did not see
any drop in the funding for this school year and Denise and I have completed our application to
receive the funds. We received just shy of $170,000 in funds which we will continue to utilize for
assisting our students through intervention and classroom aide services. We will continue to
examine the district data this year as we hope to continue to see growth through the use of these
funds.
Adult Education Director Angie Fahy reported on the following:
➢ Fire Charter
○ VCC’s Fire Charter review was held on June 10, 2025
■ Received a rating of $93.13% which the state considered Excellent
● All corrective actions are easily addressed by adding policies to the student
handbook and/or creating forms.
➢ CDL
○ Completed an evening class of 6/25, day class ends July 1
○ Orientation for July class is June 23rd
➢ CNA
○ In the past year we have served students not only from neighboring communities, but also
students from Lima, Elida, Defiance, and St. Mary’s.
○ Two students who recently lost their jobs, were assisted by OMJ, have successfully
completed and are working on entrance requirements for PNP.
○ CNA is currently at an 88% pass rate for the 24/25 AY.
➢ Customized Training
○ Recent Classes
■ Blueprint Reading
■ Fork Truck Safety
○ Current
■ Welding and AWS Certifications
■ FANUC Handling Tool Operations and Programming
■ Fork Truck Safety
■ Benchwork
○ Future
■ Train-the-Trainer for Internal Trainers
■ CNC Operations
■ Principles of Machining I and II
○ In Development
■ Supervisor Training
■ Leadership Training
➢ Policy Academy
○ Police Academy completed May 4, 2025 with 11 graduates.
■ 8 of the 11 have tested and passed the State Peace Officer Exam
■ All 11 have job offers
○ 2025 Police Academy
■ Begins 8/19/25
■ 12 students have expressed interest, 8 have started the enrollment process.
○ Virtual Reality Training
■ Made mandatory by the state
■ In the process of purchasing VR goggles
■ Instructors will receive training for this new requirement
In new business, the Board:
➢ Approved a list of supplemental contracts for mentoring and Lead Teacher
➢ Approved curriculum/professional development project requests for the math department
➢ Employed a list of Adult Education Instructors
➢ Authorized the Superintendent and Treasurer to apply for state and federal grants
➢ Approved the High School Student Handbook for the 2025-2026 school year
➢ Rescinded the March 2025 approved Special Education Model Policies and replaced with current
guidebook as released from ODEW
➢ Approved the Construction Agreement with the Paulding County Area Foundation
➢ Accepted three (3) resignations
➢ Approved the purchase agreement for the sale of the property at 301 East Second Street, Van
Wert, Ohio 45891 (parel number 12-023452.0000)
➢ Approved two overnight and out-of-state travel requests
Outside of Consent Agenda Items
➢ Appointed the four Title IX positions for the 2025-2026 school year as outlined by federal
regulations
➢ Approved an MOU with the VTO for an Online Day Plan for the 2025-2026 school year
Pursuant to Ohio Revised Code Section 121.22(G)(1), the Superintendent hereby requests that the Board
adjourn to executive session for the purpose of considering personnel matters of the school district.
Adjournment-at the call of the President and at the pleasure of the Vantage Career Center Board of
Education
Next meeting – Thursday, August 7, 2025
Board of Education Meeting at 6:30 p.m.
In District Conference Room
Regular Board Meeting
