Kimball Board of Education rescheduled upcoming meeting in favor of parental involvement

With a Western Trails Conference competition scheduled for the same date as the regular November board meeting, the Kimball Board of Education considered options for rescheduling during their regular meeting on Monday, Oct. 10.

“The WTC honor chorus competition is scheduled for Nov. 14. We have had a couple of students qualify for that in the past and we have, in the past two years, taken our show choir as well,” Superintendent Marshall Lewis said. “Mr. Hanks will be there because it is WTC and he is secretary of the conference. If we take our show choir, Mrs. Soper has a child involved, I would have a child involved, Mrs. Tabor would have a child involved and Mr. Reader would have a couple of kids involved. In terms of honoring your (board members) ability to get to your kids’ events, there is a possibility of looking at a different date. If that is the case it makes sense to combine and not have a special board meeting in there.”

The school board opted to combine their special board meeting, originally scheduled for Oct. 24, with their next regular board meeting, originally scheduled for Nov. 14 and meet just once instead on Monday, Nov. 7 at City Hall.

With no action items before the board and few discussion items, the board heard from Mike Mitchell, Mary Lynch Elementary principal, who reported that Tuesday, Oct. 18 ended the first quarter of school and Red Ribbon Week is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 24 through Thursday, Oct. 27.

Mitchell further reported that parent teacher conferences were scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 27 and Friday, Oct. 28, with no classes on that Friday.

“We had some discussion as to whether we have our Halloween party on Thursday, Oct. 27, that last day of school before Halloween,” Mitchell said. “Staff decided not to because we had parent teacher conferences that night. So we are going to do it on Monday, (Oct. 31).”

Students will parade through the Kimball County Manor and Vista Villa dressed in their costumes.

Jamie Soper, Special Services Director, reminded the board that the district is responsible for providing services to all children within Kimball County. If any children are referred to the district for evaluation, regardless of age, the district must facilitate evaluations and services as needed.

“We have providers, some on staff, some that we contract with – an occupational therapist, speech pathologist, school psychologist and a physical therapist through the hospital. We do evaluations on all children in Kimball County and then we meet with families in their homes,” Soper said. “This month has been very busy with those kinds of things and that is good. We are finding those kids in our community that need our assistance.”

The department is also currently working on a capacity building for transition special education, according to Soper. This focuses on connecting high school students who receive special services with resources from surrounding communities to build the best plan for each individual student.

“We have our first meeting for Response to Intervention, this is a program in the district that works with the teachers to help those kids in the classroom that are struggling. We talk about what kinds of things we can do differently or what has worked for other teachers and help those kids in the classroom,” Soper added. “We usually wait six to eight weeks before we start targeting those kids, so it is about that time.”

Soper has also attended a Blended Ed summit in a Greeley, Colo. Elementary school with three staff members from Mary Lynch.

“We go into an elementary school that is using Blended Ed in elementary school, and their scores have risen because of it,” Soper said. “I am really excited to start educating the elementary staff and getting them aware of more things that are out there.”