The Cassopolis Board of Education approved three hirings and accepted two resignations at its regular meeting at Squires Education Center Monday night.

The board voted unanimously to approve the hiring of Martin McGinn as its varsity track coach, Brian Klee as its junior high girls track coach and Chad Sheteron as its JV baseball coach.

Sheteron replaces Bob Ballantine, who resigned effective immediately. The board also accepted the resignation of bus driver Iraida Maldonado effective April 4.

In closed session, the board expelled a student from Ross Beatty Jr./Sr. High School.

Carrie George, who is the district’s FFA advisor and runs the Agri-Science Program at Red Brick School, told the board about the success of the Future Famers of America at the state convention last week, which included Cameron Hayden being named Region I vice president and earning the Star of Argi-Science.

Emily Waldschmidt was the state winner of the job interview CDE and the Cassopolis Agriculture Issues team won the state championship and will advance to the FFA National Convention in the fall.

The Rangers’ Parliamentary Procedures team was the state runner-up.

George then spoke to the board about the collaborative teaching model she has been working on.

She has been working on ways to gain academic credits for students involved in the Agri-Science Program. Working with agriculture teachers from St. Joseph, Cass and Berrien counties, the process began last fall.

What she found out is that the agri-science standards align quite well with the Michigan Merit Curriculum Biology standard.

Work will continue in that area so that eventually freshmen will be able to enter the Agri-Science Program.

Austin Withers represented the Cassopolis Robotics team and told the board about the Robo Rangers’ first competition in Gull Lake.

Cassopolis finished 13th out of 40 teams and advanced to the final round where it went 1-2.

The Robo Rangers are back in competition in St. Joseph March 28-29.

The board also heard from Sam Adams Elementary Principal DeeAnn Melville-Voss about the MEAP scores. She told them that while the district continues to struggle in math and science, the numbers did improve in both reading and writing, including a five percent increase in reading.

The next meeting is scheduled for March 24 at Squire Education Center.