Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Students clear lockers as school year ends

Students have cleaned out lockers, final exams are over and the first lazy days of summer are finally a reality.

For most.

Summer school at Gurdon was slated to begin June 1 and the JUMP START program for those who will start Kindergarten in the fall will be held June 7-11.

Meanwhile, Cabe Middle School will be a hive of activity as lockers are removed in preparation for the coming school year.

Gurdon Superintendent Bobby Smithson and Gurdon High School Principal Leonard Gills said summer school is on schedule. Gills said the last week of May was busy as teachers and staff worked to get final grades posted so that students would know if they needed to attend summer school. Math and English are the only two courses that will be offered in summer school this year, Gills said.

While future Kindergarten students will also have "summer school," it's designed to help them get ready for their first year of school, said Gurdon Primary Principal Rita Roe. JUMP START will be from 8-11:30 a.m. daily, June 7-11. This is a preparation time to help children become familiar with the campus. Breakfast and lunch will be provided each day. To register or for more information, call the school at 353-4321.

Roe said a preschool program is possible changes on the primary campus for the next school year. The district submitted a grant to fund the program and should have an answer by July, Roe said. If approved, an additional building will be added to the campus adjacent to the Kindergarten building.

The biggest planned changes will occur at the Cabe Middle School, according to Smithson. He said some of the changes are being mandated by the state but some were requested by the staff.

The state has now required that seventh graders chose a track of study  college bound or vocation bound. Smithson said those students are very young to be making that decision, but the requirement comes from the state level and is mandated to all Arkansas schools. The students' decisions will determine their courses. Some classes will overlap, but students will begin to be divided, typically sharing classes with other students who have chosen the same path of study.

Another change at the middle school level is a modified block schedule. Students will spend 90-minute blocks of time in math and language arts classes. Smithson said seventh graders will also be offered introduction to algebra, meaning they can finish a higher math level by the time they graduate.

Probably the biggest change will be removal of the lockers at the middle school. Smithson said the lockers will be stored for the moment in case the district decides to put them back.

The decision to remove them came at the request of middle school principal Libby White who told the school board that the majority of discipline problems  shoving and fighting  begin at the lockers. Each student will have a complete set of books to take home with them and each classroom will have a set of books for students to use at school. This means the students won't have to carry the books back and forth, and won't be able to say they forgot to take a book home or forgot to take it back to school.

Smithson said the cost of having the extra set of books will be about $2,000 per classroom.