AMBOY – Summer meetings for Amboy Community Unit School District #272 Board of Directors usually don’t have much meat.

They hold the potatoes such as financial reports.And there is the broccoli, next year planning, that is put in the refrigerator and ate at a later time.

However, this meeting had the dessert, any cake, pie, ice cream, cookies you want to call it, as a new track and jump pits are currently being constructed around the football field behind Amboy High School.

The new track replaces the old one built in July 1999.

“The track is being ripped up. It started end of June,” said Amboy schools superintendent Joshua Nichols. “They’ve poured the concrete for jump pits. We are moving the long jump pit from the field to behind the visitor’s bleachers, which will be a nice, new change. The track will be done by the end of the summer.

“Our track was in real bad shape. We couldn’t even use Lane 1 anymore. It served its purpose. We got 20-something years out of it and that’s great. But we couldn’t patch it or clean it up anymore, so we had to go forward and get a new one. I’m excited.”

Since school is not in session in the summer the board approved spend authority to give Nichols the legality to spend money for the district as spending stops July 1 and can’t be done until September when the next budget is approved.

“We do it every summer, so we have spending authority,” Nichols said. “We want to pay people and we want to keep the lights on.”

Also at the meeting, the secured entrance being implemented at Central Elementary School will be constructed by Rockford Structure during the summer, student handbooks were tentatively approved, and grant money for different Amboy educational programs was approved for use.

There will not be a July meeting for Amboy Community Unit School District #272. There will be a finance meeting on August 3 and the first 2024-25 school year board meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug 22.