EATON — Preble County Educational Service Center (ESC) Superintendent Mike Gray has been assisting Preble County schools this summer in their ongoing superintendent searches.

During the ESC Board Meeting on Wednesday, June 27, Gray updated the board on how those efforts have been going and what is next for Twin Valley Community Local School District, which is looking for its next superintendent.

“I did National Trail’s the last two weeks. As most of you know, Jeff Parker went to Eaton Community Schools and Bob Fischer is coming back to National Trail as the Superintendent. So, with that happening, I was called by Twin Valley Community Local Schools,” Gray said.

“I went down there (Twin Valley South) Monday night and met with the board for maybe two hours in executive session. We had 18 candidates for National Trail and you could throw out maybe 16 of them, so we interviewed two. I thought we could use that to say that we didn’t need to open [the search] up, but they wanted to still, so we did that yesterday.

“The deadline is July 6, that’s a Friday. They will have a special board meeting on Sunday at 4 p.m. to go over the candidates and see who they want to interview.”

Gray also gave updates on legislation that will affect the ESC as educators.

House Bill 591 is to create a new report card that does not focus on letter grades. Gray noted, he never got a call about report cards from parents.

Assistant superintendent Shawn Hoff noted, they added two new indicators.

Gray added, Representative Jeff Rezabek wants excused absence to be in attendance law. If the absence is excused it should not count against the student, he said.

Gray also gave an update on Senate Bill 216, which he called the “deregulation bill.”

“It passed the conference 13 to six and that was 13 republicans and six democrats, so they are voting along their lines there,” he said. “The other thing is, there is a guy who has the ear of Senator Huffman and he feels like the democrats are attacking the bill in the house. So, we’ll wait and see.”

In other business, board member Peggy Crabtree reported the Miami Valley Career Technology Center distributed a list of scholarships students received.

“Preble County students were fabulous. I’m not sure, but I think he said Preble County was the very best. I mean the money these kids have worked on to get is just fabulous,” she said. “We can be proud of our students.”