March 2020 Bath’s School Board Meeting

The Bath County School Board’s last meeting was on March 3rd at Valley Elementary School. The first topic of discussion was the budget public hearing for the fiscal year 2020 to 2021 where Justin Rider gave a presentation describing the current plan showing that there will be a 40% raise for Athletic and Academic stipends (capped at 4,900) with no change to current structure for football positions. Also, 1,000 dollars or 3 percent raise, whichever is greater, salary increase by FTE across all categories of employment. 

Good News in Bath County Schools where Superintendent, Sue Hirsh, or the board members share achievements of the students. She shared that Hannah Pritt, who is also the student representative, is this year’s Valedictorian and the Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year, and Destynie Lowry is this year’s Salutatorian. Mrs. Hirsh also shared that the highschool students have been writing a lot recently and participated in a county-wide event saying that it’s great to see them promoting writing. 18 members of the Beta Club attended the state Beta conference sponsored by Mindy Hooker and Angie Keyser. 

For presentations and information, school faculty usually share a slideshow or report about things going on in the school such as clubs or programs they’re doing in the classroom. For this meeting, Valley Elementary School teacher, Suzanne Paxton, shared a slideshow about her teaching methods for her math class to get the student more engaged and excited about math. She’s been using a website where it’s purpose is to make math fun and enjoyable, and her 7th-grade class has been talking about the theoretical probability versus experimental and one of these projects from the website was Wheel of Fortune and to figure out what are their odds of winning using the probability aspect. 

Student representative, Hannah Pritt, shared that spring sports have started and all four sports had a good turn out. 

As for this meeting’s action items, Wendy Tolley has been approved as a bus driver and Richard Goforth has been approved as a substitute teacher. Board member, Jeff Grimm shared that Donna Campagna and Connie Forsyth are retiring. During the action item regarding the budget discussion, there will be another meeting/budget work session to approve the fiscal year 2020 to 2021 school budget, on Monday, March 9th at 5:30 pm, at the School Administration Building in Warm Springs. Grimm said quote, “I want to make sure we’re taking care of the people we have here now.” Unquote. Members Jimmy Hooker, Karen Hise, and Clara Tennant said the same thing. For the VSBA Policies 1st Reading, Superintendent, Sue Hirsh, recommended the board to approve these policies at the following school board meeting next month so that they can all have some more time to review. 

Jeff Grimm made a motion to approve Athletic Director Coaching a varsity sport and this passed 5-0, and the approval of governance norms and protocols also passed unanimously. 

The board made a motion to change the date of next month’s meeting due to it being scheduled during spring break. It will now be on April 1st which is a Wednesday. 

This year’s graduation date was set at this meeting for Saturday, June 6th at 10 am. 

The next school board meeting will be on Wednesday, April 1st at 7 o’clock. The public is always welcome to attend.

For AMR News, I’m Abby Dufour