DOWAGIAC — As summer comes to a close, the Dowagiac Board of Education hosted its first meeting of the 2018-19 school year Monday.

During Monday’s board of education meeting, the board listened to an update on the summer food program and also approved two resignations of prominent faculty within the district.

First, the board approved the resignations of Mike Churchill and Claudia Zebell.

Churchill, current assistant principal at Dowagiac Union High School, is resigning to take a position with Coloma Community Schools.

“Coloma is close to home [for Churchill]. His kids go to school in that district, his wife teaches in that district,” said Dowagiac Union Schools Superintendent Paul Hartsig. “For him and his family, this makes a lot of sense.”

Hartsig said the position of assistant high school principal is currently posted, with the hopes of conducting interviews soon and making the full transition to the new assistant principal next month.

The board also accepted the resignation of Zebell from the board of education, as she is taking a position as media specialist for the high school. The board also voted Monday to appoint Phyllis Sarabyn to replace Zebell as board secretary.

Board members said they were sad to see Zebell and Churchill go, but wished them well in their new positions.

“I’ll miss having Claudia on the board. She’s been on for a long time. I think eight years,” said board member Larry Schmidt.

After approving the resignations, the board heard from Director of Food Services Deb Cahill, who updated the board on the state of the summer food program which concluded last month.

“First of all, I want to thank Dowagiac Union Schools for being a great sponsor for this program,” Cahill said. “Over the last four years, we have fed a lot of children.”

Cahill called the summer program a success, as this summer the mobile food program added two stops in Dowagiac in order to reach more children. She also said the program partnered with teachers and administrators to include a reading program and book drops for children partaking in the summer lunch program, which she said proved popular.

The board praised the work Cahill and her team did over the summer during Monday’s meeting.

“If you can give children food they can’t get at home and give them a book they can’t get at home, you have done a lot for them,” Schmidt said. “I think these summer programs are really cool.”

“Deb spearheads a lot of this stuff for us and we are very grateful,” Hartsig added.

Going into the school year, Cahill said the district’s new free lunch initiative has brought up breakfast participation by 3 percent and lunch participation is up by 6.3 percent.

“We are very excited about this,” she said. “We are hoping to raise that even further.”