Pocahontas County Students Chosen To Participate In Hidden Scholars Program

Marlinton, WV – The Pocahontas County Board of Education meeting Monday night started with an announcement from school Superintendent CC Lester.

“I’d just like to say, you remember the last time at the board meeting [in December 2010], I we were talking about the Hidden Promise Consortium from Glenville” he says “the two [county] middle schools have nominated to be mentored by Glenville students, and the high school is working on that right now. So on February 14th board meeting, hopefully the President of Glenville College will be here to recognize these 20 to 30 students chosen in the county.”

Hidden Promise Scholars are students in the 8th through 12th grades who are chosen by school Superintendents and Principals for participation in the program. College students will act as mentors for county students enrolled in the program, giving them a taste of college life and helping with things like ACT test preparation. After graduation, Hidden Promise Scholars who enroll at Glenville State College will get an annual $1000.00 scholarship, provided they remain full time students maintaining standard academic progress.

In other business, the board approved a contract with Frontier Communications to install an intercom/bell system at Hillsboro Elementary. The system, similar to one installed at Green Bank Elementary Middle School, will cost a little over $21,000.00. Mr. Lester says the required preliminary work was done by school maintenance workers during the Christmas break. Frontier was scheduled to begin work on the system on January 11th.

Student representative Nathan Hamons says students at the high school are getting antsy about finals.

“This week is really stressful over at the high school because it’s finals week” says Hamons. “Especially with this storm supposed to be coming, it’s kinda scary up there. Teachers don’t know when our finals are going to be; they were set for Wednesday and Thursday, now they’ve been pushed back to Thursday and Friday. Then once we finally get out finals taken, that’s when second term will start. I’m pretty stressed out, and it’s pretty crazy up there, I’m not gonna lie.”

On the personnel agenda for Green Bank Elementary Middle school, Lucy Rittenhouse is employed as an academic interventionist and Anna Hayes is retiring from her position as a special education classroom/bus aide/paraprofessional effective June 30th, 2011.

At Hillsboro Elementary, Sharla Sherman is employed as an academinc interventionist, retroactive to December 6th, 2010.

At Marlinton Elementary, Lora Miller is employed as a cook for the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable program at the school.

At Pocahontas County HS, Linda Beverage and Cammy Kesterson are employed as Co-Edge Site Coordinators, and Thomas Plumley is resigning as the golf coach, retroactive to December 15th, 2010.

At the county level, the board approved an out of field authorization for Cynthia Shreve, and a supplement for Mary Sue Burns for national certification in science, retroactive to November 19th 2010 through June 10th, 2011.

The next meeting of the Pocahontas County Board of Education is a special meeting on Monday, Jan 20th for personnel hearings.