Richland School District BOE meets

The Richland School District has a number of students requesting to enroll in courses through the university system and technical college system. Students must have a study hall built into their schedule in each quarter per approved college class. There are three classifications. The classifications depend on whether the district offers a comparable course, if there is no comparable course that fulfills the graduation requirement, or if there is no comparable credit and does not fulfill graduation requirements. If students choose to take a course not approved, the family can pay for the course and have the credit transferred back with a Pass or Fail grade. These courses not approved would not be applied to the student’s GPA but can be applied toward graduation requirements. The estimated cost to the district is $100 per credit. The board unanimously approved the requests of 20 students at last night’s (Monday) Richland School District Board meeting.

The board also approved a commemorative tree planting and bench placement in memory of Bob Rosenkranz. Bob was a biology and AP environmental science teacher at RCHS from 1990 until 2015, and then continued to substitute teach once he retired until 2020. He was a nature lover and conservationist, teaching all that he could about the natural world to everyone who stepped into his classroom. In 2006 he plotted out and started a half acre prairie that sits below the softball field on Hornet Hive Drive. He used the prairie as an opportunity to take his students out of the classroom in order to implement hands-on teaching. Once he retired in 2015, the prairie started to get overgrown due to the lack of attention due to Bob’s Frontotemporal Degeneration that he was starting to suffer from and would ultimately be diagnosed with in August of 2020, finally dying from the disease on September 3 of this year. His son, Brock, will restore the prairie as well as plant a Bur Oak tree that has been gifted in his memory. Along with the planting of the Bur Oak, he will place two “Leopold Benches” around the tree and prairie.