The Worth County School Board reorganized Thursday at their regular meeting. Amber Monticue, Adam Downing, and Michael Mullock were sworn in for another term and the officers remained the same. Tish Warner was elected President, Amber Monticue Vice President, Abby Hern Board Secretary, and Amanda Gilland Treasurer.
Jeshua Blaine was offered employment as a new Science and Social Studies teacher for the upcoming school year.
The board assigned extra duty positions as follows:
Senior High Athletics – Head Football, Jon Adwell; Assistant Football, Les New and Cree Beverlin; Head Girls Basketball, Tiffany Bliley; Assistant Girls Basketball, Ashton Lewis; Head Boys Basketball, Les New; Assistant Boys Basketball, Mason Hawk; Head Girls Track, Janice Borey; Head Boys Track, Cree Beverlin; Assistant Track, Josh Smith; Head Softball, Tiffany Bliley; Assistant Softball, Ashley Briner; Girls Golf, Janice Borey; Football Cheer & Pep Club, Abby Hern. Boys Golf and Basketball Cheer & Pep Club are vacant.
Junior High Athletics – Head Football, Dan Collins; Assistant Football, Chris Healy; Head Girls Basketball, Ashton Lewis; Head Boys Basketball, April Healy; Head Softball, Cody Green; Assistant Softball, Darin Drury and Paul Tracy; Girls Track, April Healy; Boys Track, Josh Smith; Cheer & Pep Club, Ayrica Fletchall.
All high school varsity coaches and their assistants will also direct summer camps in their respective sports.
School Clubs, Organizations, and other Extra Duties – Activities Director, Cree Beverlin; Special Ed Director, Amber Hawk; Special Ed. LEA, Chuck Borey; Instrumental Music, Vocal Music, and Band Camp, Caleb Smith; Scholar Bowl, Merry Spiers; Adult Farm Instructor, Reese Zollman; Yearbook, Merry Spiers; Musical Drama, Nanci Drury; Assistant Drama, Darin Drury; Concessions, Selina O’Connor; FBLA, April Healy; FCCLA, Rebecca New; FFA, Reese Zollman; Flags, Megan Cassavaugh; Junior Class Sponsors, Rebecca New, Sarah Smith, and Julia Wideman; Field Prep, Jeannie Fletcher; Student Council, Karen Andrews.
The board authorized the school to pursue CTE grants from the State Department of Elementary & Secondary Education. The school is pursuing a $20,900 grant for the agriculture and business departments for instructional equipment, supplies, and software. It is a reimbursement grant and if approved, the school will be reimbursed $14,700 by the state. The state awards these grants to courses that are identified with high-demand occupations.
The school will offer summer school for elementary that is open to all students that will be enrolled in K-6 at Worth County during the upcoming school year or who attended Worth County at the completion of the current year. It will run from May 22nd to June 9th from 8:15 am to 12:30 pm on Mondays through Fridays, with no school on May 30th. Signup must be completed by May 5th.
The school will also offer credit recovery for resident students from grades 7-12. It will run from 8:15 am to 3:05 pm on Monday through Friday from May 18th to June 1st, with no school on May 29th.
The state is offering a grant to support summer school for this summer. Reimbursement is subject to appropriation. Free breakfast and lunch will be offered to students in attendance. Transportation options will be made available after summer school signup is completed.
The school is also pursuing a grant from the Department of Health and Senior Services which will allow the school to test its water system for lead contamination if approved. This program, known as the WIIN grant, assists schools in low-income areas in testing their water systems for lead.
The school will offer Career Ladder to its teachers for the upcoming school year for activities performed outside the classroom. It will be $1,500 for Stage I and $3,000 for Stage II. This pay will be in addition to the normal pay for teachers at Worth County. Teachers who have completed two years in public schools and have met certain other requirements will be eligible for Stage I, while teachers who have completed three years will be eligible for Stage II. Eligible activities can include such things as tutoring or mentoring students, assisting students with postsecondary education preparation, receiving training outside of that offered by the school, mentoring other teachers, or any other activity that is aligned with the District School Improvement Plan, Curriculum Development Plan, Professional Development Plan, or Missouri School Improvement Plan, or instructional improvement.
Elementary Principal Chuck Borey reported that participation rates for parent-teacher conferences were at least 90%. There were only four office referrals for the third quarter. The Kindergarten and 4th graders were the Tiger Token winners for March. Heart Hero activities wrapped up. Students who raised over $25 got to participate in Cosmic Bowling. The top five got to slime local law enforcement officers.
The 2023-24 Kindergarten parent meeting was a success on April 12th, with 85% in attendance. There are 26 expected to sign up for Kindergarten, meaning that enrollment is expected to increase with a small class graduating. Screenings took place on April 14th, with 100% attendance. Grandparents Day will be May 11th. Elementary Track & Field Day will be May 12th.
High School Principal Jon Adwell reported on the Community Cleanup Day held on April 18th. Mr. Smith and Mrs. Overholtzer, Ms. Bliley, and Mrs. Spiers walked the streets of Grant City cleaning up trash. Mr. Smith took a group to prepare the track for Tiger Relays. Mrs. New and Mrs. Smith took a group to help prepare food. Mrs. Wideman took a group to do school landscaping. Mr. Zollman and Mr. Green took a group to Sheridan to clean up. Ms. Maschino and Mrs. Coleman took a group to Allendale to clean up streets, the park, and the Community Hall. A group went to Denver to pick up sticks and trash around the Schoolhouse and park and Denver Rocks. Mr. Hutchcraft took a group to Worth to clean up trash. Mr. Beverlin and Mr. Blaine took a group to the golf course and Pool Park to pick up sticks. Mrs. Andrews took a group to the Fairgrounds to do scraping and painting.
FFA officers for the 2023-24 school year were named. They will be Brylee Rush (President), Rylee Ruckman (Vice-President), Abbi Brown (Secretary), Autumn Cousatte (Treasurer), Bridgette Hightshoe and Brylea Paxson (Reporter), Carter Chapman (Sentinel), and Eva Engel (Chaplain).
The Greenhouse group will be selling plants, flowers, and hanging baskets along with birdhouses made by the FFA.
Testing will start on April 24th and run through May 8th. The FCCLA will hold their blood drive May 3rd.
Curriculum Director Josh Smith gave snapshots of what students were learning in different grades:
Kindergarten English/Language Arts: Develop phonemic awareness in the reading process by blending spoken phonemes to form one syllable words. Students worked in small groups and played super speller, a game where the students roll the dice and move that many spaces on the board. Whichever picture they land on they must spell the word out loud for the group to write.
1st Grade Math: Draw conclusions from object graphs, picture graphs, T-charts and tallies. Students completed an M&M graph, with data represented by colors and amounts of M&M’s. Students also completed pictographs and bar graphs with this data, noting differences and drawing conclusions from the graphs.
7th Grade English/Language Arts: Draw conclusions, infer, and analyze by citing several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as make inferences drawn from the text. Students are currently reading the novel THE GIVER and completing paired work on novel study packets over specific chapters. The Giver is a 1993 novel written by Lois Lowry set in a society which at first appears to be utopian, but is revealed to be dystopian as the story progresses. The society has taken away pain and strife by converting to “Sameness,” which has eradicated emotional depth. There is no color, climate, terrain, or true sense of equality.
High School English: Review, revise, and edit writing with consideration for the task, purpose, and audience. Introduce the topic, maintain a clear focus throughout the text, and provide a conclusion that follows from the text. Achieve the writer's purpose and demonstrate an awareness of the audience by making choices regarding organization and content. Students are finishing up a research paper unit with modeling how to "proofread" and peer review papers. They are moving beyond small edits such as punctuation and spelling to dig deeper and really think about what they are reading. Students will get to take turns practicing this peer editing before completing their final drafts.
High School Web Design: Select and develop content, plan an organized layout, and select appropriate navigational structure for a website. Students are building a website for the Worth County Education Foundation. They have a lot of information they have to figure out how to present and make it so that the foundation can easily update in the future.
Superintendent Chris Healy presented the financial picture. All figures are through March 2023. Local revenue (includes Proposition C money) is $1,569,448, up around $136,000 from last year. Revenue from county sources is $297,147, up around $46,000. State Minimum Guarantee money is at $885,547, up around $1,000. Transportation money is at $125,621, up around $80,000 from last year. Classroom trust money is at $88,172, down around $1,000 from last year. CTE Base and Performance money is at $1,899, down around $15,500 from last year. Small School Grant money is at $79,927, down around $2,000 from last year. Total revenue from all sources without restricted fund 1 money is $3,580,557, up around $405,000 from last year.
Expenses through March were up $231,943 from last year. The increase in revenue is from federal revenue that was received in July 2022, transportation revenue, the state minimum teacher salary grant, and an increase in Proposition C revenue. The school purchased a new bus in March. The school did not make a bond payment in 2023, which made a $100,000 difference in expenditures. The balance from the Capital Projects Fund was $586,171.
Preliminary work on the 2023-2024 budget has been done. The budget assumes a worst-case scenario with a deficit of around $300,000. The beginning fund balance for Fund 1, the Operating Fund, is forecasted to be at $1,608,752. Revenues are projected to be $1,885,012, expenses at $1,686,973, with an ending balance of $1,806,791. The budget assumes a $303,298 transfer to the Teacher Fund and a $199,445 transfer to Fund 4, the Capital Improvement Fund. The balance for Fund 1 at the start of the 2024-2025 school year is projected to be $1,304,048 while the Capital Improvement Fund is projected to be $728,705. This is a draft budget and will be subject to change before the board approves it.
Frequently, the school has done worst-case scenario budgets over the past several years, and then has seen the projected deficit come out much smaller or in the black.
The school received one bid from Ronnie Bain of Gentry to do elementary exterior metal painting for this summer as well as the bus barn roof and side walls. The total bid price is $16,500. The board voted to accept the bid.
The board received two bids for supplies to do the ag building walls and constructing a new elementary office. Worth County Lumber bid $3,627.32 while Sutherlands bid $3,245.29. The board voted to award the bid to Worth County Lumber, since they were local. The school will provide the labor for the project.
The school is removing the boiler heater that was used to heat the shops and installing new heaters. The windows in both shops will be replaced with materials that provide more insulation. The school has a large first grade class for next year as well as a large incoming Kindergarten class, so they will turn the current Parents as Teachers room into a first grade classroom. The school will construct a new Parents as Teachers room in the corner of the activity center. District maintenance staff will provide the labor.
The board approved pay scales for the 2023-24 school year for certified, non-certified, extra duty, and administrators. There is an average 3.4% increase to certified and extra duty, 3.8% to non-certified, and 3.1% to administrative. Salary schedules are contingent on continued legislative approval of the Minimum Salary Grant, which raises minimum teacher pay to $38,000 a year.
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