School Board considers VALTS program changes and requirements

The Kimball Board of Education reviewed, and updated the student, parent and staff handbook at their regular meeting on Monday, July 16. As part of this process, High School principal Eugene Hanks added a section for the VALTS (Valley Alternative Learning Transitioning School) program.

Currently the district is considering whether to continue using VALTS as an alternative for local students, who must be in their junior or senior year to attend the program. Students opting into the program must also have adequate credits to graduate within one year of classmates and they cannot be on an Individual Education Plan (IEP).

Interested students must complete an application, have parents or guardians sign that and then complete the interview process with their building principal or counselor. Kimball is allowed to send two students for up to four semesters each. The board has until March to decide whether they will continue partnering with the program.

To ensure the board has all the information needed to make the decision, board members Heather Norberg and Brad Reader toured the facility and talked with administrators.

“This whole thing was brought up with VALTS because we were toying with the idea of not continuing on with VALTS. I guess I was just really disappointed when I saw that the only thing added to the handbook is what we are currently doing,” board member Heather Norberg said. “Brad (Reader) and I took a field trip to VALTS. We came back and asked for more accountability on the students and to make it more like a scholarship for the kids to apply to go to this special school.”

Norberg continued that they asked for a Kimball school board member as well as the Director of VALTS, George Schlothauer, to be on the committee for the school.

Reader added that Scholthauer’s input would help the district decide which students would be successful in the program.

“The statistics they gave us from VALTS I wasn’t super impressed with,” Norberg added. “Like the number of kids that are still not completing the program; that aren’t going on to college. I don’t know how successful they are being in VALTS and moving on and we wanted to make some changes.”

Board members on the curriculum committee, Clint Cornils, Reader and Norberg, asked that the criteria for passing the program be spelled out and adhered to as there have been students unable to pass in the allowed time frame.

Administration questioned whether it was better to allow students who learn at a different pace to take the time needed to graduate successfully, even if it meant a little extra time in the program.

“We have one, she was a junior when she went in; she did not graduate and it is going to take her one more quarter to finish up, otherwise we are going to have a dropout,” Principal Eugene Hanks said. “She struggles in school to begin with, she got into VALTS and wasn’t able to complete it in four semesters. She was going to try to complete it over the summer. If you put that caveat in there, we are going to have dropouts.”

Board President Lynn Vogel agreed that some leeway past the four semesters was acceptable, particularly if the student enters as a junior, making the timeframe identical to that of traditional schools. Reader disagreed.

“That’s a huge cushion,” Reader said. “If they are going to drop out, they are going to drop out. They have to understand there is a deadline, this doesn’t go on forever.”

“It doesn’t go on forever. Another quarter is not forever,” Vogel said. “It is affecting this child’s life forever.”

As far as the handbook goes, Superintendent of Kimball Schools, Dr. Elizabeth Owens, argued that the description of VALTS included is broad enough that it need not be changed much for handbook approval.

Board members voted to add a reference to board policy for VALTS in the handbook and the curriculum committee will meet to write policy for the program to include all the additional criteria desired.