Berryville board votes to furnish students’ supplies

The Berryville School Board is continuing a long-standing tradition, and has once again approved the district purchasing school supplies for students for the upcoming school year.

At its regular meeting held Monday, July 22, the board approved the district spending approximately $40,000 on the supplies such as pencils, paper, glue and scissors.

“It’s something we’ve done for quite a few years now,” superintendent Owen Powell said. “I think it’s a big help to parents. There are a few things that parents still have to go out and buy, like a backpack or something like that, but almost all of the supplies and materials the students will need are provided by the district.”

The district has been purchasing supplies for students for so long that families have gotten used to not having to worry about going out and buying supplies from stores.

“When we first started doing it we got a lot of positive feedback about it,” Powell said. “We’ve been doing it for so long that parents have gotten used to it, so there’s probably not as much feedback.

“I do know parents appreciate it, and hopefully it helps them out a little bit.”

The board also approved other customary annual expenditures such as renewals on technology licenses, curriculum items and property and vehicle insurance policies.

Also approved was a fuel purchase of approximately $8,000.

“We don’t use a whole lot of fuel in the summer, other than summer school or a few camps, things like that,” Powell said.

The board also OK’d the district spending approximately $10,000 on fiber optic for the new ABC Preschool that is set to open in August.

“There’s a few things out of the scope of the construction build that the school has to take on and running a fiber optic line is one of those things,” Powell said. “The construction crews run all the conduit, but we’re responsible for actually dong the fiber optic.

“We’ve got a company coming in to do that.”

The school board also recently approved the purchase of playground equipment for the preschool.

“The playground was another thing that was not included in the scope of the construction,” the superintendent said.

In personnel changes, the board accepted the resignations of dyslexia paraprofessional Rhonda Price and special education teacher Jonathon Wood.

Hires approved were special education teacher Sabrina Williams, middle school teacher and coach Shawn Walter, dyslexia paraprofessional Kayleigh Stringer, bus driver Hilary Parks, substitute custodian Brenda Currie and special education paraprofessionals Raven Spencer, Cristen Jech and Tyler Brown.

The board also approved the transfers of Brittany Latting from the elementary school to the middle school and James Long from the middle school to the high school.

PHONE POLICY THE SAME, FOR NOW While many districts around the state are using a state-offered grant to purchase Yondr pouches for students to place their cell phones in during the day, Powell said he’s still researching the topic.

“That really just came out a couple of weeks ago and I’m not one to make quick decisions on that because it’s a pretty big decision,” Powell said. “Our policy basically already says that students can’t have their cell phones powered on during the day.

“The state has awarded a lot of schools, pretty much I think any school that has applied, this grant to purchase these pouches which basically lock down the cell phone for the entire day.”

The neoprene pouches produced by the company Yondr have been gaining popularity with school districts across the state and country.

If the pouch system is implemented, and according to the Yondr website, students would put their cell phones in the pouch each day when they arrive at school. Once inside, the pouch is locked and students will keep the locked phone with them throughout the day. Students would then unlock the pouch as they leave each day.

“Before we make a big decision like that we want to get some feedback from parents,” Powell said. “Obviously, that’s something I would want to take to the board to have them approve as well because that would be a new policy.”

The information from the state didn’t come at an ideal time for districts, Powell said.

“Here we are getting ready to start school and to make a big decision like that, it was kind of poor timing,” he said. “We’re going to have some discussions about it and we’ll see where we go with it.”