School board heeds 2nd-graders’ request

A group of second-graders at Berryville Elementary School recently made a special request to members of the school board.

Just as promised, the board listened.

During school board appreciation month in January some of the younger students in the district wrote letters thanking board members for their service. Among those letters were requests for new monkey bars to be installed at the K-2 campus, according to superintendent Owen Powell.

“We had some elementary students who wrote letters to the board and they asked the school board for monkey bars on their playground,” Powell said. “Our board members read these letters and it caught the attention of our board president, Chad Hipps.”

Hipps reached out to Christy Graham, elementary principal, and requested the students turn the monkey bars idea into a research project, Powell said.

“We had the students do a little research on it and they researched the monkey bars, picked out about five or six different sets that they liked and looked at the pricing,” Powell said.

Three students, Ellie Plumlee, Lennon Warren and Sawyer Williams, were among the students who requested the monkey bars and presented their findings to the board at its regular meeting held Monday, March 11.

“They came to the board and talked about the monkey bars they liked and gave the board some pricing,” Powell said. “That was a pretty cool deal.”

Thanks to the efforts of the students, the wheels are now in motion to get a set of the monkey bars that were picked out installed at the K-2 playground, the superintendent said.

“I’m in the works with the Pre-K building that we are in the process of building, where there will be all new playground equipment, so I’ve been in communication with the playground equipment people,” Powell said. “The next step is I will communicate with them and we will look at the sets of monkey bars that the students brought to the board and we’ll get one of those and put on the K-2 playground.”

Powell said the students who came up with the idea should be proud of their efforts.

“It kind of happened by chance,” he said. “Every year usually the elementary and intermediate students write those appreciation letters and it just so happened that a couple of the students said ‘hey, we want some monkey bars.’ I just think it’s pretty cool how it happened.”

SALARIES, SCHEDULE

At the March 11 meeting the board also approved a series of items from the district’s Personnel Policies Committee.

The board voted to end the salary schedule freeze that was put in place after the LEARNS Act required all teachers to be paid at least $50,000, Powell said.

“After some time to be able to research it and adjust it, it’s not frozen anymore,” he said.

Starting next school year teachers with longer tenures will also be rewarded.

“We’re going to do a $1,000 step at 10 years, $2,000 at 15 years, another $1,000 at 20 years and another $1,000 step at 25 years,” Powell said. “And that’s just on the bachelor’s degree side. Master’s degree would go up more and of course if you have a specialist it would go up more as well.

“The beginning teacher salary is pretty good right now from the LEARNS Act but our veteran teachers didn’t really get the big jump like the beginners did. So, this will really reward our veteran teachers a little bit more.”

Also approved by the board was the calendar for the 20242025 school year with the district moving to an alternative, hourly- based format.

Instead of using a traditional 178-day calendar, the district will use a schedule based on 1,068 hours. Powell said the school day will be 11 minutes longer beginning in August and that will allow the district to build up five snow days over the course of the year that can be used in the event of winter weather.

“We are moving from a daily calendar to an hourly calendar which is something new for us,” Powell said. “We will track hours and that will enable us to bank about five days in case we have inclement weather.

“If we don’t have inclement weather, by banking those hours, we will get out of school earlier.”

In past years, districts could use AMI days where students could do assignments from home and districts didn’t have to use a snow day.

AMI days, which were authorized by a 2017 state law, were popular among many districts during winter weather months and became well-known in every district during COVID-19.

Last year, districts in the county had anywhere from seven to nine AMI days because of weather — which all counted toward the mandated 178-day school year.

When the state legislature passed the LEARNS Act, a $50,000 salary minimum was enacted for all teachers and the state set aside funds to help support those raises. However, the LEARNS Act states that for districts to be eligible for funds to implement the salary increases “a public school district shall be open for on-site, in-person instruction for at least” 178 days or 1,068 hours.

“When we had AMI you had some flexibility,” Powell said. “Now, you have to do something or you could be going to school until July.”

The first day of the 2024-2025 school year will be Monday, Aug. 12, with the last day currently set for Friday, May 23, 2025.

The board also approved transferring a Certificate of Deposit, which earned $47,938 over the past year, back into the building fund, Powell said.

“About a year ago we invested $1 million in a CD at 4.7 percent interest,” he said. “That CD has matured so I asked the board to transfer that back into our building fund.”

The board also OK’d spending $55,726 on air conditioning repairs at Bobcat Arena.

In personnel approvals, the board approved the resignations of speech pathologist Brenda Newby, elementary teachers Auston Crow, Katie Crow and Chasity Hayhurst, middle school teachers Jessica Bickel and Bryce Burden, junior high cheer coach Melissa Baker, bus driver Janeyce Sprouse and ALE paraprofessional Rebecca Wineinger. High school teacher Mary McCullough’s retirement was also approved.

Other personnel approvals included hiring Roxanne Enix as building learning coordinator, hiring Emily Bird as special education paraprofessional and the transfer of Cody Curtis from the middle school to the high school.

The contract renewals of certified staff were also approved by the board.

PRE-K BUILDING UPDATE

Powell said the construction of the district’s new ABC Pre-K Building is going well.

“It’s coming along great,” he said. “We’re probably a month ahead of schedule and several hundred thousand dollars under budget. Everything is going really well on the project.”

Work began on the property just north of Bobcat Arena behind the elementary school last September for the 7,500-square-foot building that will feature six classrooms for 4- and 5-year-olds.