Changes in Store at Worth County School

Worth County’s school will have a new look when school starts up again next fall. Superintendent Mike Rennells and Secretary Kandy Sorensen will move across the hall to the room where the computer lab was. The computer lab will move to Chuck Borey’s old classroom and Chuck Borey will move from a teaching position to assistant principal and his office will be where Nancy Lewis’ office was. Incoming Principal Jon Adwell will move to Kandy Sorensen’s old office, which was his idea as it would allow him to see what was going on in the halls at all times. Another change requested by Adwell which will be implemented will be the creation of an In-School Suspension (ISS) room where Rennells’ office used to be so that there will be an immediate consequence for student misbehavior. Another ISS room will be placed where the nurses’ station was in the elementary.
Moving the High School Computer Lab to where Mr. Borey’s office was will allow high school classes to do work on the computers without interrupting the library work. Another move that has been discussed is expanding the Partnership Library; the school and the library have been in talks to see if that was possible; the present library was built so that it could be expanded at a future date if funding was available.
Board meetings will be moved to Mr. Rennells’ new office under the new plan, which Rennells says will ease workload on library staff.
Most of the construction work and renovation will be done in-house, thanks to custodian Joe Burbach, whom Rennells credited with saving the school thousands of dollars that would normally be bid out.
Another change being made will deal with the elementary. Walls will finally be put up in the elementary classrooms. This was a move that had been discussed for 25 years, but had never been put into action. But Rennells said that it was a matter of improving student achievement at the third and fourth grade level; the school was last in the conference in test scores, which Rennells said would cut down on noises and distractions and allow for more learning to take place. “It’s not because of our teachers and it’s not because of our students,” explained Rennells.
The school will have one principal in Jon Adwell next year and one assistant in Chuck Borey, a move that Rennells said would save the school $80,000 annually. In-house replacements for other vacant positions will create another $70,000 in annual savings, which will absorb anticipated federal cuts; over the next 10 years, federal budget cuts could wipe out almost all federal education funding regardless of who gets elected president in 2012.