ALBION â It was, fittingly enough, an organic discovery.
It involved a woman from the Netherlands, an old Army man, a curious group of young people, some teachers passionate about project-based learning and a downed tree.
The fifth-grade classes at Central Noble Elementary School were developing trails in the woods that the corporation owns east of the Albion campus earlier this school year.
One of the students stumbled upon a dead tree. Inside that tree? Bees? Bunches and bunches of bees.
Like most people, the initial reaction was fear. That part of the trail was closed down to avoid the bees.
ALBION â The Albion Town Council Tuesday voted 5-0 to open up a gravel lot it owns to public parking, adding an extra 15-20 spots to what has become a very congested downtown area.
Due to the construction of a new county annex on the block to the west of the Noble County Courthouse, the downtown has lost:
⢠spots on the west side of the York Street across from the Noble County Courthouse;
⢠the parking lot at the former prosecutorâs office where the courthouse is being built.
A recent day saw multiple steel trucks attempting to deliver their loads to the construction site. According to Albion Town Marshal Scott Cole, when one truck was inside the fenced-in area waiting to be unloaded, the other steel trucks had nowhere to go, further adding congestion to the downtown.
ALBION â Nothing has been set in stone, but the Central Noble School Corp. has a tentative plan of what to do with its Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund monies â add staff.
Congress created the fund to address the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the website curriculumassociates.com, Indiana received $214.4 million in emergency ESSER I funds, another $888.1 million as part of the ESSER II funding, and an additional $1.9 billion as part of the ESSER III funding.
During Tuesdayâs regularly scheduled school board meeting, corporation business manager Ty Osenbaugh told the board the corporation had spent its ESSER I funding of $172,000. According to Osenbaugh, the lionâs share of that money went to pay the substitute teachers the corporation had to use due to teacher absences in the wake of the virus.