Highland School Superintendent Planning Ahead For Changes To Budget Process

Monterey, Va – Highland School Superintendent Dr. Will Crawford responded to some questions from the Board members at last week’s meeting. In response to the upcoming budget planning process for next year, Superintendent Crawford has been looking over the school’s budget and had a suggestion for the Board.

“I’ve reviewed every aspect of the budget and I’ve found just a few things that I think we need to do differently in terms of planning,” says Dr. Crawford. “We need to plan ahead for capital projects, we need to look at the age of some of our equipment, and begin to put a plan in place to say this piece of equipments’ 30 years old, probably not going to last much longer; what are we going to do when it goes out.”

School staff members have been hearing rumors about changes in the evaluation process that are likely to come from the State Department of Education in future years. Superintendent Crawford wants to get a head-start on improving the evaluation process, so when the state-mandated changes in evaluations come to the schools, Highland will already have a rigorous evaluation system in place. He’s starting the process by revising his own evaluation form and submitting it to the Board for approval.

“I’ve been looking at instruments for evaluation for every single staff member,” he says. “We have some staff members who’ve not been evaluated in the past and I really would like for everyone to have an evaluation, not just the teachers or the teacher assistants. I think all of us should take a look at and see how we could improve.”

Superintendent Crawford also plans to conduct a review of student benchmarks to see how they can be used to improve student performance in the future.

“We’re going to be looking at benchmark assessments over the next couple of weeks to see who our students are and how they perform,” he says. “And what we might do to help students that might be having some difficulty.”

Board members were also concerned about how close the town’s sidewalk project would come to the north side of the school parking lot.

“That walkway will be six feet away from our paved area,” says Dr. Crawford. “There will be lights all along the way out there; the lights will be installed and paid for by the county.”

The next regular meeting of the Highland County School Board will be Thursday, November 3 at 7 PM in the High School Library.

Story By

Heather Niday

Heather is our Program Director and Traffic Manager. She started with Allegheny Mountain Radio as a volunteer deejay. She then joined the AMR staff in February of 2007. Heather grew up in the Richmond, Virginia, area and now lives in Arbovale, West Virginia with her husband Chuck. Heather is a wonderful flute player, and choir director for Arbovale UMC. You can hear Heather along with Chuck on Tuesday nights from 6 to 8pm as they host two hours of jazz on Something Different.

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