The Tucker County Board of Education met recently with all Board members present. Following the call to order and the Pledge of Allegiance the Board moved on to special presentations.
Principal Jay Hamric of Tucker County High School presented the Board with an informational presentation on a new program they hope to begin at the high school. The “Spark” program will be a small group adult mentoring program for “at risk” youth.
“We do see this as a community project/issue. We look forward to growing this program as more than a school program”, Hamric said. “Our purpose isn’t to look at the problems- we’re gonna flip it; identify their strengths and work from and develop that.”
The purpose of the program is to provide opportunities for student to build resiliency, coping skills, and self-efficacy. They hope to identify about ten students and see if they’re willing to work with adult mentors for about 8 one hour sessions during school. The students will work on things like relationship building, self-awareness, emotional self regulation, goal setting, social skills, and community and civic involvement. Perhaps the most popular session will be one about mindfulness where the students will get to work with horses.
At the conclusion of Hamric’s presentation, Board Vice-President J. Preston stated: ” I appreciate that you’re coming up with a new way of approaching this.”
Board member T. Turner like the idea of a small group model and Superintendent Campbell confirmed that all volunteers will go through background checks.
The next special presentation was a DTEMS State of the School Report given by principal Daryla Rapp.
Rapp listed numerous facility needs such as new roof, external doors to replace rusted ones, a new water pump, new oven for the cafeteria (the current one is original to the school and may have been second hand when brought there). She also listed personnel and student achievements noting that the school is currently ranked as a “transitional” school and she’s hoping for the upgrade to “success” school. She expressed the need for a full-time math teacher citing the below national average ACT mathematics score. Rapp wanted to give the report as she plans on retiring at the end of this school year.
Following the special presentations and having no delegations pertaining to agenda items the Board approved a minor agenda adjustment .
The Board approved the minutes of the previous meeting, the vendor accounts and paid bills, and the monthly financial report. The Board approved the out-of-state travel request for TVEMS eighth grade class to go to Kennywood. The Board approved Newlon’s International Sales LLC as a work based learning site.
The Board approved a request for bids for bank services in order to select a single depository bank to provide sweep accounts for all funds of the Board. Preference would be given to any in-county bank if they meet the bids requirements.
The Board approved Bus #4 be declared surplus property.
The Board moved on to information reports.
Superintendent Campbell reported that there were over 400 responses to the public survey for the upcoming school calendar changes. He stated that they would try to accommodate the community’s wishes as much as possible while still complying to what the state has mandated.
The Board approved the in-state travel report.
M. Parsons gave a committee report that the WVU Extension Services have started going over the applications for program director for the local 4-H program.
Having no delegations pertaining to non-agenda items the Board moved on to Personnel Matters.
The Board accepted, with regret, the retirement of Daryla Rapp as Principal of DTEMS effective June 30, 2014. Rapp has served as principal for the last 11 years and 27 years before that as a teacher. She hopes to spend time with her children, grandchildren, horse, and maybe write a children’s book.
The Board approved the employment of Jack L. Mullenax as Assistant Track Coach, TVEMS effective March 5, 2014.
The Board approved the employment of Joshua O. Evans as Head Baseball Coach, TCHS effective March 5, 2014.
The Board approved the employment of Frederick J. Davis as Track Coach, Boys and Girls, DTEMS effective March 5, 2014.
The Board then entered executive session and upon return from such accepted the Superintendent’s recommendation of a 365 day expulsion for “Student A”.
The Board then returned to executive session and upon return approved the motion to extend the contract of Superintendent Dr. Eddie Campbell Jr. for four more years.
Dr. Campbell expressed his honor at the extension and stated that he felt that Tucker County Schools could be the best school system in the state, if not the whole country, and that he now had four more years to work toward that goal.
Having no further business the Board of Education adjourned. The next regular meeting will be at 5:45 p.m. on Monday, March 17, 2014 at the Board office. It will follow a 4 p.m. special meeting on budget and a 5:30 p.m. special statutory meeting.
For more information call Tucker County Schools at 304-478-2771 or go to www.tuckrcountyschools.com
