Pocahontas County Students Win Big at Math Competition!

Pocahontas County Students Win Big at Math Competition!

“We have less than 2% of the total enrollment in our region, in our RESA 4, and we took over 30% of the prizes at Regional Math Field Day” said Mrs. Johanna Burt-Kinderman “So we want to give special recognition to Casey Griffith, Second Alternate, Corinne Airgood as First Alternate, Myles Goodall in Eighth Place, David Rose in sixth Place, and our Vincent Harper as First Place in this Region. This is unheard of for Pocahontas County to have that kind of showing at (Regional) Math Field Day.”

You just heard Teacher Johanna Burt-Kinderman brief the Pocahontas County Board of Education at their March 23rd meeting about this amazing accomplishment. The Pocahontas County Students competed against 42 students from five other counties represented at the recent Regional Math field Day Competition. The other counties were Braxton, Fayette, Greenbrier, Nicholas and Webster. The five students just mentioned all placed in the top fifteen positions at the competition.

Johanna went on to discuss the win and to credit other teachers who helped make this possible.

“And we are taking these trophies from Greenbrier East (laughter), another high school to offer way more course load then we do” said Johanna. “so I just cannot say enough. I have three of my colleagues here, Jennifer Mayo?, Laurel Dilly?, Leah Shinaberry and Chris Sutton who is not here with us tonight but they have just done an extraordinary job .“ “I think they need to stand up and be recognized” added School Board President Grimes. “Absolutely” said Johanna. (applause).

As for what’s next for out math champions, Johanna explains.

“I can’t even recall a time when we sent a single student from high school to states (State Math Field Day)” said Johanna. “So we’ll need to be traveling to Concord with a full team and we would appreciate your support with that. But I just want to throw out there this is totally unanticipated. We are so proud and those folks would love to feel your support as well.”

In other presentations before the Board, Sam Gibson spoke up to object to the way the County Social Studies Fair was handled last week. After hearing objections from parents of children who allegedly did not get a chance to present their projects at Monday’s scheduled Fair, Members of the board of Education spoke to the School Superintendent and a second fair was held on Thursday. Mr. Gibson felt this was not done according to West Virginia State Rules and expressed his anger about the situation to the Board Members. His son received a lower score at the second Social Studies Fair although he insisted that was not the reason he was objecting to the way the Board and the Superintendent handled (or in his opinion mishandled) the matter. The Board members advised that they were just trying to be fair to all the students. After the meeting, Board President Grimes told me that if the second score was lower it was not counted. There were some allegations that six students did not get to present at the first fair, and there were questions about the judging at the first fair. Others denied both of these claims.

In other actions:

• The board received updates of the Math Academy from several teachers that attended. All were enthusiastic about the new approaches to teaching math they learned at the Academy.

• Heard from Lisa Dennison, the Pocahontas County School’s Child Nutrition Coordinator about why the Board of Education needed to approve the Memorandum of Agreement between the Pocahontas County Board of Education and RESA 1 to hire Anita Ellis, President of Nutrition Food-Service Educator, Inc for an amount of money not to exceed $1500.00. Dennison explained that the school system is a member of a food buying cooperative with other counties since 2012 which saves the schools many thousands of dollars in food costs each year. She says that Anita Ellis is an expert in reading nutrition labels and gets the coop the best deals on the most nutritious foods. Later in the meeting the Board did agree to sign the memorandum to hire Anita Ellis for the next school year. This matter had been tabled at the last Board of Education meeting to get more information on it.

• The Board approved a Memorandum of Agreement between the Board and the Pocahontas County Extension Service supplementing the Extension Service with $5000.00 as required by West Virginia law.

• The Board approved Articles of Agreement between the Board and Davis & Elkins College for college student pre-service and student teachers.

• The Board approved Spencer McCoy and Lawrence Workman Jr. to be Volunteer Assistant Baseball Coaches at the high school.

• Approved a number of Professional and Service Personnel actions (see list on our website, WWW.alleghenymountainradio.org.)

• The Board approved the following Tax Levy Estimates for the year beginning July 1, 2015:
Class I: 19.40
Class II: 38.80
Class III: 77.60
Class IV: 77.60

The Board clarified these are the normal levies which are part of everyone’s normal Property Tax, and not related to the “Excess Levy” which failed to pass at last year’s election

• Finally, the Board approved a new Alternative Education Policy which will prevent elementary school alternative education students from having to attend with high school students.

See our Website, www.alleghenymountainradio.org for additional information about this Pocahontas County Board of Education meeting.