Episode Details

Happy Friday!

As we finish up the fall semester of the school year, I want to thank you, again, for all of the hard work, patience, cooperation, intelligence, innovation, and vigilance you provided to educate our students throughout this half of the year. The weeks have flown by, as they always seem to do, so as we put a bow on the fall semester of 2022, remember to reflect on the accomplishments of this semester to prepare our minds for the next.

Charter Renewal

On Wednesday, Mrs. Buckley, Mrs. Warner, and I presented our district’s application to renew the Polk County Virtual Academy (PCVA) charter. We testified before the Charter Authorizing Panel about the first five years of our conversion charter school. Mrs. Buckley and Mrs. Warner addressed the school’s successes and challenges and plans for the future. The panel unanimously approved a motion to grant us another five years of operation.

We have adjusted the mission of the charter, however, to be more about individual student success. The original mission of the charter was to offer homeschoolers in our district a free public school virtual curriculum option. However, throughout the COVID pandemic, the image of virtual learning became less attractive as we discovered the difficulties it created for so many students. Now, PCVA will be used to provide flexibility for learners who need it for achieving whatever life goals they have in mind along with remaining as a viable option for area homeschooled students.

Calendar Planning

When we return to school in January we will begin the work of planning the district calendar for the 2023-2024 school year. This year’s calendar is based on a minimum number of hours students must attend school instead of days. This was because of new legislation to give districts more flexibility in developing yearly school calendars.

The feedback on the calendar at the beginning of the year was good since staff members had more time to prepare for students to come to school; but, since we have to create next year’s calendar before finishing out this year’s, we will not be able to see what the end of the year will be like. We will be finishing school earlier compared to past years but May is a busy month and we may miss not having those days to carry out all of the end-of-year activities. There are many considerations as we plan.

Now would be a good time to have another Thought Exchange regarding the school calendar. If you would like to comment and read others’ comments on the question about next year’s calendar, please click the link.

Recognition and Information

I attended the Mena Bearcats Wrestling match at Acorn Monday night and it was very exciting and energetic. Our wrestlers won several matches and all of them were fiercely competitive. It takes a lot of guts to compete in a one-on-one event like that in front of spectators and I am proud of each one of our wrestlers. There will be another match at Acorn in January and I encourage all to go see what it is like.

In our board meeting minutes from Wednesday, you may have read the bus information report. We are considering purchasing new trip buses but I wanted to mention that Mrs. Moody and Mr. Davis in the Transportation Department have applied for a GoRED Grant. This grant provides funds to pay for new buses with cleaner emissions systems. If the grant is awarded, it will reduce our costs quite a bit. It is a complicated application and we thank them for the extra effort to bring additional funding to the district.

Our recent band and vocal Christmas performances have been outstanding. The Third Grade program was a huge hit and drew a tremendous crowd. As always, Mr. Morgan brought out the best in our high school band