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Saturday, July 31, 2010
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Boaz principals update school board
Published September 24, 2009
Boaz City School Board members met Thursday to hear beginning of the year updates from the five principals in the school system and other school officials.
During the board meeting, principals and officials reported on innovative projects going on within the schools, including:
• New safety doors have been installed in all school buildings.
• Constitution Day activities including Corley Elementary School students crafting cards for soldiers and Boaz Intermediate School students creating posters interpreting what phrases of the Constitution meant to them.
• Corley Elementary School will play host to its annual “Breakfast with Buddies” day on Sept. 30 from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m.
• Boaz Elementary students will enjoy the annual Fall Festival on Oct. 20. Plans are under way now, said Principal Randall Morton.
• BES students are also taking part in a new math program where they use oversize calculators to learn basic addition and subtraction skills. After several weeks, teachers replace the calculators with paper copies of the keypad. Students continue to “push” the buttons as a prompt to figure the product. “It is amazing what a great learning tool it is,” said Superintendent Leland Dishman said.
• Special activities are being planned at all Boaz schools for parent visitation month in October and Red Ribbon Week, also in October.
• School lunch week will be celebrated the week of Oct. 12-16, featuring NBA basketball stars Chris Paul, Dwight Howard Vince Carter, Steve Nash and Diana Taurasi.
• Learned the system’s technology plan is three years ahead of schedule. “Smart boards” are in each of the system’s first-12th grade classrooms. That goal was set for the 2012 school year, said Wayne Caudle, technology director. He also reported the system had a student to computer ratio of 1.7 to 1. Many other schools in the area have between 2 and 3.5 to 1 ratio.
• Walker Segars, transportation director, reported adding a bus route to serve the few children riding to Boaz schools from the Mountainboro area. While the bus is by no means full of Mountainboro students, he has shifted some students from other routes to the bus, easing crowding on other routes.
• Heard plans are under way to have a flu shot clinic at Boaz Middle School the last week in October. Under the plan, students will be given the shots only if parents bring them and after school, anyone wanting the shot will be given one on an as-available, first-come, first-served basis. Plans are not yet complete.
Later in the meeting, Chief Financial Officer Brian Bishop told board members he has spoken with state legislative officials about the projected state of the Education Trust Fund.
“If I had a nickel for every time I was asked how the year would be,” Bishop said. “Right now, they are saying if we have zero growth, proration will be 6.4 percent. If that happens, it will be what it will be. (Department of Education officials) are estimating 8.5 percent proration. If that happens, we will still hold our own.
“We will break even this year. We were able to balance the budget for next year and I hope we will be able to hold the fund balance where it is. I’m telling you, though, that 2011 year is looking God-awful. But, we will be able to get through it one way or another.”
Dishman agreed.
“Don’t listen to the naysayers,” Dishman said. “We got here by being positive, aggressive and working hard. We are going to stay that way and get through this.”
Board members gave Dishman the approval to work on plans for reroofing the Boaz Middle and Elementary schools. He hopes to have engineering work completed and the plans sent to state officials so work can begin in May or June.
A 12-month contract was extended to Ann Landers as the assistant principal of curriculum, instruction and professional development. Board member Fran Milwee voted against the contract. Board member Alan Perry did not attend the meeting.
The boys high school baseball team was given approval to play in a tournament in Destin, Fla., over spring break. The team will travel to Florida the week of March 15-19, 2010.
The board also handled several personnel matters, including:
• Transferring bus driver Aletha Trayor to the Mountainboro route.
• Granting BES secretary Mandy Willmon a leave of absence from Sept. 21 to Dec. 18.
• Dawn Lybrand was hired to fill Willmon’s leave.
• Hired Eleanor Cleveland, as a teacher at BES; Michelle Perigo and Carl Cofield as half-day bus drivers; Bethany Bracket, student teaching assistant for Carol White Physical Education Program; and Stephanie Sellers as a student teaching assistant for the Migrant Even Start Program.
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