According to Superintendent Michael Beresford, Terri Roberts-Leonard joined Carmel Clay Schools (CCS) on Jan. 19 as the first diversity, equity and inclusion officer of the school district. Additionally, Beresford said the CCS Board has decided positions for the next 4-year term, with Layla Spanenberg as president, Katie Browning as vice president, and Pam Knowles as secretary.

“Our new diversity, equity and inclusion officer began work the 19th (of January), on Tuesday, so we’ve got a new person in our administration who’s getting to know the district,” Beresford said. “(The officer is) Dr. Terri Roberts-Leonard; we’re excited to have her join. She was working at Franklin College, and now she’s joined our team.”

Additionally, Beresford’s superintendent report on Jan. 11 included several accomplishments of students in the CCS district, congratulating CHS’s men’s basketball team for going undefeated as of Jan. 11 as well as junior Aditya Ariyur for winning first place in the 2020 Congressional App Challenge (IN-05) with his app CHS Club Access. Beresford also said CHS administration had been working on the ISTEP+ testing schedule, which is now available.

“(CHS administration is) trying to work on a schedule because you have to get (ISTEP+ testing) in-person, so they’re working on a schedule on how they could bring all the juniors in for a day or two, so students will probably have some extra virtual learning to be able to pull that off,” Beresford said.

Junior Jinhee Won said she thought the administration handled the ISTEP+ testing situation well with only having juniors come in on Feb. 5 and Feb. 10, the testing dates, but was not looking forward to testing for the entire school day.

“I think only having juniors come in (for ISTEP+ testing days) is good because of COVID, which I think is a good job on (the CHS administration’s) part, but the schedule for juniors—we have to spend the entire just taking a test, and we have to do it for two days,” Won said.