Kent Rotary Club August 18, 2020 meeting minutes
Zoom Meeting on August 18, 2020
President Randy Smith welcomed the group.
Patriotic song God Bless America was arranged by David Dix.
President Randy led the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Invocation was offered by Doug Fuller.
Brian Bialik handling Rotareminder duties.
Visiting Rotarians
None.
Guests
Shawn Gordon introduced her guest Kelly Tremaine.
Roger Sidoti introduced his guest Anne Moneypenny.
Roger Kramer introduced his guest Kara Kramer.
Announcements
- President Randy announced that the next meeting of the Rotary board is Thursday, August 20th between 5:30pm and 7:30pm.
- Club financial statements are now available via the club E-Letter.
- Will Underwood continues to work through virtual arrangements for next year’s speech contest. To date, arrangements remain unfinished.
- Coleman’s Stay Right at Home event will be a multiday virtual event beginning September 17th and ending on September 24th.All members are invited to attend.
- Carol Crimi of the club’s foundation board announced that ~$30m was raised during their recent virtual event, nearly equivalent to what has been achieved in the past. Allocations from the foundation will be broken down as follows: $5k to the Rotary Cub of Kent for a literacy project; $2.2k for the Kent Historical Society (KHS) to fund ½ of a salary position; $1.2m for a joint proposal by the KHS and Main Street Kent regarding architecture in Kent. In addition, the club foundation has revised its giving policies to commit 50% of the principal build-up in a given year, to fund grants.
Club History segment featuring member Jim Meyers
Jim shared with the club the origins of the Chattaugua Salute once given to a Kent Rotarian. The salute, which originated at a speaking event in November, 1927, was characterized as the waving of a white hanker-chief in response to the speaker who was hearing impaired.
In 1926, Martin L. Davey became a US Representative and in 1928 became a candidate for Governor of Ohio.
Speaker
Member Tom Larkin introduced our speakers – Abbey Bolton; Heidi Singer, Janice Swan and Todd Poole, principals at Longcoy, Walls, Davey, and Holden schools respectively.
Today’s remarks from all of the system’s elementary school principals focused on the challenges related to modified teaching methods in response to COVID-19. Specifically, all principals generally agreed that wearing of masks; achieving safe physical/social distancing; chaos of scheduling and servicing special-needs students, to be among the most common hurdles.
Moreover, there was concern over remote learning effectiveness; their ability to assess students (socially and emotionally) and to identify particular needs as a result of remote learning to structure outreach activities.
One positive outcome of what might be referred as reverse remote learning was an example provided related to music instruction. In this instance, the instructor, unable to be present for face-to-face instruction, was able to arrange to teach from home by streaming (using conferencing technology) to students organized in physical-distanced groups in the music room.
There was consensus that COVID-19 has forced KCS to rethink its teaching methods. The collaborative efforts guided by school administration have produced answers that are unique to KCS and serves as another example of why our school system is highly regarded.
Dave Myers provided the club’s response.
Respectfully submitted,
Brian K Bialik
