Highland School Board December Meeting

Highland County School officials are mulling over the elimination of its Virtual Meetings Program for lack of popularity.

During Tuesday’s monthly meeting, Highland County Board of Education Chairman Kenny Hodges entered the motion to discontinue the virtual meetings, saying he would “like to look at shutting it down.” He asked School Superintendent Drew Maers to check with state officials, who at one time required virtual meeting services, to see what the board would have to do to stop providing the service.

School Board Vice Chairman Jason Wilfong voted to table the matter because Board Member Sherry Sullenberger was out of town and not in attendance.

Gary Lane, the schools Technology Director who was overseeing Tuesday’s board meeting for virtual meeting users, said the state mandated program began with the 2020 Covid outbreak but is no longer required. At the height of the Covid pandemic, Lane said, he would have more than 120 virtual meetings participants during any given board meeting. He added, “Tonight, we had four

The Highland County Board of Education on Tuesday heard details of the proposed Comprehensive Plan for county schools that could improve student attendance, increase graduation rates and provide an established action plan for students and families in the event of a violent school emergency.

Schools Superintendent Dr. Drew Maerz told two of three board members in attendance that the state mandated plan is updated every five years. A 23- member planning team (comprised of…….) was tasked with reviewing the previous Comprehensive Plan and “identify opportunities for improvement.”

Following the presentation, Maerz was quick to point out the most important issues the planning team addressed.

“I think there are a number of them. Obviously, working with our students and to get them into school and address absenteeism is important. I think one of the biggest challenges we put in there (the plan)  the team came up with is personalizing education,” Maerz said. “We feel because we’re a smaller division, we should be able to do that, but really working with families and students and to say, what are your individual needs and what are your aspirations and how do we tailor instruction, to meet that differentiated instruction. I think that could be a game changer for us.”

School safety is another issue the team looked at, Maerz said.

”We always are working school safety. We’re working with our EMS department, we’re working with our Sheriff’s department, and internally, how do we keep our kids safe.? What do we do when an active shooter? While we can get to the point when we do a  true full scale drill, where we’re moving kids from this campus to a remote location, work with families, like, where are we going to pick them (students)) and walk them through that,” Marez said.

I know that sounds a long way away but we should be able to do that today. There’s a lot of moving parts, but our goal would be is to do a full, family-involved drill with that,” Maerz continued. “ But part of that is going to be  informing families what it looks like, how it acts, to having some communication with our family. That, to me could be really important for all of us to be comfortable with what to do if a negative situation should arrive. And, we do worry about our kids’ safety every day.”

 

No vote was taken to allow the public 30 days to review the plan, which can be viewed at the schools website.

 

 

This is Mike Folks for Allegheny Mountain Radio News.