School Board OKs LED Scoreboard, Speaker for Memorial Stadium

If you were at the Hoover High vs. Wilson, Ont., home football game on Sept. 7, you probably got a chance to see Memorial Stadium's new LED scoreboard in action.

The Hoover High Sideliners, who also undertook the purchase and installation of the stadium's artificial turf, footed the bill for the new LED graphics board, which is inserted into the original scoreboard. The North Canton School Board discussed paying for its installation Wednesday evening.

The board looked at the graphics board installation as well as the installation of a new speaker for the stadium that evening. They approved both.

Installation for the LED graphics board, installed by Adams Signs at a cost not to exceed $19,000, will be paid for from the district's cell tower account. And Staley Technologies is in charge of speaker installation, also covered by the district's cell tower account. The speaker costs no more than $20,000 and will be installed not in the stands, but in the scoreboard area.

"If you're ever at a football game, the sound is horrendous at best," District Treasurer Todd Tolson said. "Again, this group has worked with us to pay for a portion. They're covering one speaker; we're covering the other speaker."

Superintendent Michael Hartenstein said the graphics board and speaker should have had board approval earlier than the Wednesday meeting, along with some service contacts also appeared on the agenda later than expected.

"This is another item ... that I'm bringing to you kind of after the fact," Hartenstein said. "I wanted to make sure all the details were clear and transparent. And again, this is not how we're going to operate in the future."

Also on the agenda that day was the acceptance of a gift — a TV news and weather set donated from Chennel 5 WEWS in Cleveland. The board approved the gift, which would be used by the the Channel 11 video productions program at Hoover High.

In other business, the board:

• Approved several supplemental and limited contracts for the 2012-2013 school year. You can see those in the full agenda in the PDFs section of this update.

• Voted down an agenda item for the employment of "coordinators of volunteers" for the elementary and intermediate schools. The coordinators receive a stipend of $2,000, and board members expressed their concern with the stipend being included in the recommendation and asked that Hartenstein come back to the board with a different recommendation. "Not that we don't want volunteer coordinators; we just want to see if there's a different way to go about it," board member Chris Goldthorpe said.

• Tabled a lease agreement between North Canton City Schools Board of Education and the North Canton Heritage Society, effective Oct. 1, 2012, through Oct. 31, 2015. "The lease agreement just needs some housekeeping done to it," Goldthorpe said. "There are no changes to the substance of the agreement."

• Set its next meeting for 6 p.m. Oct. 17. The board will have a work session at 5:30 p.m.