EATON — An anonymous technology donation in the amount of $87,692 was recently presented to the Preble County Educational Service Center (ESC).

The board expressed their sincere appreciation to the donor for his or her generosity.

The PCESC Board also approved a technology purchase in the amount of $16,431.90 during their meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 25.

The PCESC Superintendent will be submitting annual reports to the donor to inform them of the progress of the students. They will also come in to see the progress themselves.

Board President Rhonda Schaar also asked that the board receive those annual benchmarks.

“I want to make sure that the donor knows that we do not take this donation lightly at all and that we appreciate the desire to be anonymous, but we also want out heartfelt gratitude to be expressed,” Schaar added.

According to Shawn Hoff, Assistant to the PCESC Superintendent, the workforce committee met again to discuss the Business Advisory Council.

“We still don’t have an answer from the Economic Development Partnership, but I did talk to the committee yesterday to see if it is something they would be interested in pursuing. We didn’t have some of our manufacturers there, so we couldn’t get a consensus vote, because we want to make sure they were all there. Next month we intend to go back and talk to them,” he said.

“We have tons of people with a lot of different perspectives. Sometimes when you have so many people it is hard to come up with a consolidated plan, but we have bullet points we’re going to target at the next meeting to move forward. I hope we can make this happen.”

ESC Alternative School Principal Brent Short informed the board they added two new students to the school, which makes their total 44. He noted, there are still two in the “outlook.” The school may be up to a population of 46 in the next couple of weeks.

“The conversations I have when they’re trying to send them over is not just that they can’t handle them, but that we have more resources and they like what we’re doing here,” he said. “That, to me, is a good conversation to have. They feel like we can help these kids. The parents say the same thing as they come through. They’re a little nervous at first and then we talk them through it and they settle in pretty well.”

After much discussion, the board approved $16,650 (plus mileage) be spent on teacher evaluations through Administrator Assistance, LLC. This will cover 25 teacher evaluations at $666 per evaluation.

The ESC Board will meet again on Wednesday, Nov. 15, at 5:30 p.m., at the ESC offices at 587 Hillcrest Drive in Eaton for the monthly meeting.