• Lowry High School will have a welcoming and attractive entrance sometime next year, said Dr. Dave Jensen at the school board meeting on Tuesday night. Bids for the construction of a single-point of entry will take place in January and construction will begin over spring break of next year. The cost of the project will be about $300,000.
• Dr. Jensen is inviting parents and community members to have lunch with him on Monday, Sept. 29, at noon in the district office. Jensen said in an email that some of the most valuable pieces of information he has received have come from casual conversations. The brown bag lunch will provide a forum for people to learn about happenings at the school district.
"... one area I am interested in is improving the flow of information that is provided to our stakeholders to ensure it is available in the most effective means possible," said Jensen. The district uses social media, such as Facebook to communicate with the public and also traditional media such as the radio stations, but Jensen is hoping that parents can provide additional methods that may be available to enhance communication. Monday's lunch will be the first of monthly brown bag lunch opportunities Jensen will host throughout the school year.
• Winnemucca Improvement Group representatives Ray Parks, Chad Peters and Rusty Bahr provided an update on the Winnemucca Recreation Center and Boys and Girls Club. Bahr said they were moving forward with the plans for Phase 1 of the project, with possible ground breaking next month if the weather allows it. The site work of Phase 1 includes leveling the ground and installation of utilities such as water and electric. While funding has been secured for the first phase, the group is asking for support on a 0.25 percent sales tax which would sustain recreation in Humboldt County.
The mayor said the tax would help maintain recreation facilities such as existing parks but excluded the golf course.
Bahr, who runs the Boys and Girls Club in Elko, said having a Boys and Girls Club would benefit the school district by helping to improve graduation rates. In Elko, graduation rates of senior class participants in the Club are at 100 percent for the last two years, said Bahr. The Club emphasis is on developing "successful humans" by focusing on character and civic responsibility in addition to a healthy lifestyle.
Jensen said the first phase of construction on the recreation center requires the removal of some dirt, which creates an opportunity for the district to make some modifications to the junior varsity softball practice fields. Using the dirt removed from the recreation center could level the fields which would then be made into multi-use fields at a cost of about $90,000.
Jensen said the money would come from bond funds - funds which are used for capital improvement projects and not teacher salaries or the like. Lowry Principal Ray Parks said the boys and girls soccer teams do not have a varsity field and the construction of the recreation center and need for a location for the overburden combines two needs well.
Board members asked Jensen if the bond oversight committee would have to approve the funds, and Jensen said it would. The issue was tabled for the next board meeting over concerns about the funding.
• A Gallup Poll measuring the hope, engagement and well-being of students will be conducted from Sept. 30 to Oct. 31. The board did not want to make participation mandatory for school administrators and so participation is voluntary.
According to Gallup, the factors measured by the 10-minute poll have been shown to drive students' grades, achievement scores, retention, and future employment. Demographic information, such as age, grade and gender will be gathered in addition to the 20 poll questions.
• Paradise Valley principal Robert Lindsay and teacher Kim Acorda presented the school board with their school performance plan, although, as Acorda noted, a five-star rated school is not required to provide one. Acorda said the school curriculum audit was a valuable process, and they were able to set goals for the year.
Acorda said Paradise Valley School needed access to technology as she said the school lagged behind simply because of the Internet service available in the rural area.
• French Ford Middle School representatives principal Robert Lindsay and Dean of Students Michelle Garrison presented the school board with their school performance plan. A downward trend in math scores from 2007 to 2013 was noted, and while scores were in decline from 2007 to 2010, the averages remained above the state. From 2011 to 2013, scores fell below the state averages.
To combat the low math scores, teachers at French Ford will create tests that measure the learning of the students for each math unit. They will also math intervention and enrichment programs based on those assessments. A focus on professional development in professional learning communities will increase their understanding of how to create and implement a math intervention block.
• Winnemucca Grammar School principal Dorene Kitras presented her school's performance plan, and she said her school had gone from a five-star rating to a three-star rating. She said the emphasis at the district has been to improve math scores, and the goals for the school were to develop an intervention plan in math and teachers will collaborate in teams on data analysis, instructional strategies and student intervention groups. Additionally, the school would use these same goals to help students with reading, in which Kitras noted scores had dipped.[[In-content Ad]]
