South Pem. board prepares for school year to begin

The South Pemiscot R-V School District Board of Education met in regular session Tuesday, July 11. After approving to pay the bills for the month of June, the school board approved MSBA policy updates.

Next on the agenda, Superintendent Chris Moore explained to the board that Jacqueline McGee of “Helping Ministries” requested to use the Central Elementary kitchen to prepare lunch and dinner meals for area children. The meals will be served at the area parks. The dates would be from July 12 through Aug. 4 or until OPAA needed the kitchen. The board approved to let Ms. McGee use the kitchen.

Mr. Moore next talked to the board about utilizing Evaluate by Catapult Learning. “When you test a student, it’s meant for the teacher and administrator to get the data and see where we are. It’s intended to eliminate gaps and increase understanding,” he said. “The schools who utilize Evaluate have seen some increases. I don’t think it’s a silver bullet. You will see modest improvement if you use it. If you use it correctly - where teachers look at it and administrators look at it - and you try to see where students are struggling and see what they are not getting and you do it in a collective and individual way, there’s a good chance we can see major improvement.”

He further explained, “The school’s job is to make the child a better learner. In theory, that’s what Evaluate is supposed to do - drive your instruction to get your child from here to there in an upward trajectory. I think it’s a good thing to try. I think it’s the best thing in Missouri right now. We would like to have something to help us. If we don’t like it, we can always go back.” After discussing, the board decided to try it out for the 2017-18 school year.

The board also approved the bus routes for this coming year.

Mr. Moore talked to the board about having a social media site. “Schools can have official social media sites. With doing that, you would just have someone in charge of overseeing that daily. I’m primarily talking about Facebook and Twitter.” The principals of the school would share information. A motion was passed for the school to have an official social media page.

The next meeting of the South Pemiscot R-V School District Board of Education will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 24.school