Mary Kay Irwin, Senior Director of School-Based Health with Nationwide Children’s Hospital, gives a presentation regarding a proposed partnership between Nationwide and the Marietta School District at Monday’s Marietta City Schools Board of Education meeting. (Photo by Amber Phipps)

The Marietta City Schools Board of Education met Monday night to discuss further changes that have been occurring over the past few months.

The school district has undergone a series of resignations that have left open positions to be filled. There are disagreements over how this process should have gone.

At the start of the meeting, students from Marietta College sat in to witness the board meeting process.

A presentation was given by members from Nationwide Children’s Hospital for school orientated health clinics. While Belpre has already accepted the partnership, some of the Marietta board members heard about this partnership for the first time Monday evening.

The partnership would include an on-grounds pediatric care center where students can go to get the care they need during the school day. As proposed in the presentation, the intent would be to provide timely and effective care that allows kids to avoid missing hours of school to go to the doctor.

“There is a whole list of data that really talks about how health and education are diagnostically intertwined,” said Mary Kay Irwin, Senior Director of School-Based Health at Nationwide. “When you partner together, kids and eventually adults really go on to have a better quality of life.”

The goal is to incorporate physical and mental health for students and families in the community to have access to help through the school district. The school-based clinics will include primary care, preventative and behavioral health services.

According to Irwin, Nationwide will provide the clinic supplies and equipment but the cost for renovations will be determined upon the initiation of the partnership.

The board agreed to make a decision by the next meeting on March 24 at 6 p.m.

After the Nationwide presentation, the meeting was open for statements. Teachers from Washington Elementary School came together to express their complaints and concerns about the stability of their teaching environments.

Jenny Galloway is a first grade teacher at Washington Elementary and feels that there has been a lot of miscommunication between the board and the district. Like the rest of her coworkers that showed up to the meeting for support, they voiced their displeasure with various situations.

“I have been teaching in this district for over 30 years and I have never seen this district in such disarray,” Galloway said. “Unfortunately, the points I will be bringing up are nothing new to office administration and our concerns are not taken seriously.”

Two more teachers from Washington stepped forward to the podium to express their concerns about the district.

Teachers Andrea Eichhorn and Ellen McVicar described the disrespect they felt when their concerns weren’t acknowledged. Both teachers elaborated on discrepancies when it came to verbal agreements and they desired for all changes and discussions to be written on paper for accuracy and honesty purposes.

The board acknowledged the concerns from the Washington teachers.