Deal will provide meals for Berryville elementary students

Elementary students in the Berryville School District will receive a meal at the end of each school day thanks to a new partnership approved at the district’s monthly school board meeting on Monday, May 15.

Superintendent Owen Powell said the agreement is with Springfield-based Life 360 Community Services will not cost the district any money.

“We currently provide a snack to our K-5 students and this group is going to come in and take over the snack program and provide a meal to our students in the afternoon,” Powell said, adding that the Life 360 organization is USDA-approved and complies with all local, state and federal regulations.

“It’s a really good deal for our students,” he said. According to Life 360’s website, through a partnership with USDA, the organization “provides meals to students in rural areas at the end of each school day. Each meal includes servings of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, milk and meat or meat alternate.”

Other approvals by the board included a 25-cent increase in breakfast and lunch prices. Breakfast for K-12 students will now cost $2, lunches in grades K-5 will be $2.50 and lunches for grades 6-12 will be $2.75, Powell said.

“Raising meal prices is not something we like to do,” he said. “But with the cost of everything just increasing like it is, we had to raise the prices. It’s something that we have to do right now at this time.”

All summer projects for the district also were OK’d by the board, Powell said.

“The summertime is a really busy time at our schools when we do a lot of maintenance and improvement on our facilities,” he said. “We do a lot of cleaning and pressure washing and we’re going to do a bunch of flooring, clean carpets, replace a few doors and a few new cameras in some areas.”

The board also approved an expenditure of $25,721 for diesel fuel for district vehicles, primarily buses.

“In about probably the last two years, prices of diesel have really gone up,” Powell said. “While this one was over $25,000 I’ve seen it as low in the past as $10,000, so that gives you an idea of much diesel prices have increased just over the past couple of years.”

Powell said the fuel will last the district until about “September or October.”

“And that’s just because our usage slows down over the summer,” he said. “We won’t use the fuel over the summer as we do during the school year because we’re not running as many bus routes. I think we have six routes for summer school and typically we have 21 routes during the school year running the roads every day.”

In personnel votes, the board approved a new part-time teacher for the school’s agriculture department and a building learning coordinator position.

“The agri position is a unique situation,” Powell said “One of our substitute teachers is actually a retired veterinarian who has relocated to the area. In talking with him, he was interested in teaching some animal science and some veterinary science classes to our agriculture students. We’re going to partner with him and he’s going to teach four sections of those classes. It’s a really good opportunity for our students.”

The learning coordinator position is part of some restructuring, Powell said.

“We currently have two instructional facilitators at the high school and middle school and we’re going to combine those into one position,” he said. “That’s going to be the building learning coordinator position. The primary function is to enhance student learning and support our teachers.

“Overall, we’re just trying to improve teaching and learning.”

In school choice approvals, 11 students are leaving the district and 18 are coming into the district, which Powell said had 1,781 students as of May 9.

“That’s up about 40 students from this time last year,” he said.

In other personnel action, the board approved the resignations of cafeteria worker Beveryly Teigland, bus driver Thomas Rowe, high school special education teacher Amy Romero, middle school teacher Christy Dowell, intermediate nurse Jennifer DePew and elementary teachers Elizabeth Summers, Karen Diaz, Michelle Knapp, Michelle Blevins and Kim Walker.

Certified hires approved were elementary teachers Samantha Burke, Kourtney Shipley, Leah Etchison, Katie Masters, Auston Crow, Katie Crow, Julie Forthman and Hillary Bancroft; intermediate teachers JP Dean and Rose Guhr; high school special education teacher Janice Rogers and head football coach and dean of students Macklin Chermak.

Classified position hires approved included Shirley Hoskinds, Angela Boatright, Terrie Webb and Charli Zovak as cafeteria substitutes and Auston Crow and James Boatright as substitute bus drivers.

District employee transfers for the 2023-2024 school year that were approved by the board included Courtney Yarbrough from elementary to intermediate, Darlene Morrow from fourth grade special education to CBI, Jonathon Wood from CBI to special education, Sarah Logan from classroom teacher to facilitator/intervention, Heather Zaloudek from high school instructional facilitator to high school ELA, Erin Hall from middle school instructional facilitator to high school math, Sylvia Shomshor from high school ELA to middle school/high school ALE coordinator and LaTisha Smith from middle school to high school special education.