Hello! While I've been in Mozambique, Shanda Nichols volunteered to write a guest-blog on the October Hallsville Board of Education meeting. Here is her blog (unedited). I look forward to catching up when I return! Special thanks to Shanda for this!
---- Hi, I’m Shanda Nichols, VP of the Hallsville School Board. While Craig was away on a mission trip, I told him I would take a stab at filling his shoes writing a board meeting summary. At our last board meeting, we had a brief discussion with Mayor Mickey Nichols about the safety of the crossing guards who assist our students both in the morning and in the afternoons crossing 124 and Route B. We’ve had a few near misses involving crossing guards and vehicles this year. Mickey contacted MoDot and has started the conversation about the cost and possibilities of adding a light at the intersection of Route B and Hudson. This is in the very early stages. MoDot quoted a minimum cost of $20,000 for this light. This area would need additional work to become ADA compliant which would add to the cost. Mickey asked if the school had considered adding a bus route to pick up those students in the two subdivisions off of Route B. The school will discuss the possibilities of adding a new bus route. The safety of our children is very important to all of us, so we encouraged the Mayor to continue discussions with MoDot and keep us informed. Representative Cheri Toalson Reisch was in attendance in what she intends to be an annual visit to update the board on what is happening in Jefferson City and discussing any concerns we may have about upcoming legislation. Cheri stated the school foundation formula is fully funded and she expects this to continue. She hopes with the Governor’s decision to lure new businesses to Missouri, the formula will continue to be fully funded and possibly additional new money could be provided to schools!! Her stance on charter schools is different than her fellow representatives from Kansas City and St Louis. The schools in her district continue to do well on state testing so she will continue to be a strong opponent to charter schools. Our district continues to have contact with Cheri as well as Caleb Rowden to voice our concerns about legislation which we feel will either adversely impact or have potentially positive impact to our district. We reviewed the Parent As Teachers Program (PAT). Even though we are losing one grant, First Chance For Children – which will not be renewed, we will still be able to serve all of the high needs families in our district which make and keep their appointments. You may recall from last month, the board approved additional funding for this program. Our Activities Director stated he has formed a committee to consider drug testing our students. This is in the early stages of consideration and will begin with discussions with counselors and nurses. There are a lot of decisions to be made – is there a need?, do we randomly test all students or only the student athletes and those involved in extra curricular activities? There are 600 schools in our state and 300 do some sort of drug testing. Stay tuned as we will keep you updated as this discussion moves forward. We have set the calendar for new work sessions to gain your input about a possible no tax increase bond. As our district continues to grow, we are quickly running out of space to teach! Our enrollment for the current school year is 1400+ students – that’s a bunch! Open sessions will be held on the following Monday’s at 6:30: -November 13 -December 11 -January 8 Please put these on your calendar as we want to hear from you! Be on the lookout for additional details as to location closer to the dates. Mr. Downs reviewed his report on Staffing Ratios. I would encourage you to review this report on our District page under School Board meetings. His report can be found under District Reports. While our student to teacher ratio is within DESE guidelines, our Specialty teacher (Elementary Music, Spanish, etc) ratios are outside of the guidelines. In addition, our student per administrator ratio is above guidelines. John’s report reviews staffing ratios for Southern Boone, Boonville, Wright City, Centralia, Macon, California and Versailles. Our 313 students per building administrator far exceeds the average of those districts reviewed of 246. Southern Boone has 214 students per building administrator. As the number of students per building increases, this brings additional discipline issues and other issues which our administrators have to deal with leaving less time to complete classroom observations and evaluations. This ratio will need to be an issue we will need to address soon. We finished our discussions with updates on a fume hood for the chemistry classroom and lunch balances. Earlier this year, we purchased the fume hood necessary to remove fumes from the chemistry room during experiments. Unfortunately, we have had an extremely difficulty time trying to find someone who wants to install this hood. Principal Daly continues to research leads and contacting individuals who may have experience in installing this hood. The fumes which are generated from chemistry experiments are currently being vented from the classroom – this fume hood would be more efficient. We will continue to research this installation issue and keep you informed. Unpaid lunch balances and how to handle them have become a hot topic lately especially after Southern Boone’s decision to pursue legal action against the parents of students with large negative lunch balances. We have decided to continue to offer students some type of lunch if their account goes negative $10. This meal could be a peanut butter or cheese sandwich, a ½ piece of fruit and a carton of milk. The cost of this meal will be paid for by the school. We will continue to send reminder letters to parents with student having a negative lunch balance. That is all for the summary, I hope I did an adequate job filling in the shoes of Craig. Thanks for reading his blog and I would encourage anyone with concerns to reach out to one of the board members. We can’t improve our schools if we don’t know what concerns you may have. We are here to serve you!
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AuthorHallsville resident. Foster Parent. School board member. Politico. Jesus Follower. Cardinals Fan #MizzouMade Archives
June 2020
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