Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Board hires company to renovate middle school offices

Doyle Howard Construction will be working at two Prescott school campuses.

The company was hired to build the multi-purpose complex and field house on the Prescott High School campus in a special meeting of the Prescott School Board Thursday, June 10. It also submitted the low bid to remodel the office at McRae Middle School and was approved by the board during its regular meeting Tuesday, June 15.

There were only two bids for the office project, with Howard's being the lowest at $22,900.

The board recognized the PHS Destination ImagiNation team for its 15th place finish in the World finals in May in Knoxville, Tenn. They competed against teams from Brazil, Korea, Turkey, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Guatemala and British Columbia as well as the United States. There were 65 teams from Arkansas alone in the event.

James Cannon was recognized as having the Outstanding Agriculture program in Southwest Arkansas from the Arkansas Vocational Agriculture Teacher's Association (AVATA). He was presented a plaque by the board.

Cannon serves as secretary of AVATA and said he was lucky enough to come out of the annual meeting with the top program in SWAR for the fourth year in a row.

The judges, he said, take everything the students in the program do into account when making their decision.

"The plaque says Prescott, not James Cannon," he said, "because of the students."

Two students from the Blevins-Emmet district have chosen to transfer to the Prescott School District for the 2004-2005 school year under the freedom of school choice plan.

The board agreed to pay Garland School, which handles the district's problem students. According to Hyacinth Deon, Prescott superintendent, this is done at the end of the year based on the actual number of students the district sends to Garland in Hope.

These students, she said, are sent there for the alternative learning environment (ALE) because they could have been expelled otherwise.

Garland, she said, is paid on a per diem basis for the students.

Agnes Morrow, new president of the Prescott District Education Association (PDEA), made her first appearance before the board. She said the PDEA is looking for a "positive and productive" year next year.

Officers for the organization, she said, are attending the Arkansas Education Association (AEA) leadership workshop in Hot Springs this summer.

According to Morrow, the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) increased Prescott's foundation aid by $227,000 for the 2004-2005 school year, which is a good thing for the district.

Smart Core curriculum policies were approved by the board for the new handbooks. These policies are primarily for seventh graders to help them choose between taking courses to help them with college prep classes in high school, or possibly a vocational career later on. However, students can choose one or the other, but change their minds later if they so decide.

Parents, teachers and the students need to work together to decide which classes the children need to be in, Deon said.

The major difference, she said, is the Smart Core classes will lead the students to having to take two years of one foreign language, and four units of math exceeding the algebra and geometry level.

The other classes don't require either the languages or higher level math. But, students will still have to have algebra.

The district is still working to reduce the number of units needed for graduation. Under the former block scheduling system students required 28 credits. Those who graduated this year needed 27, and those who will graduate in 2005 must have 26 credits. These are based on the seven-period day the district currently has in place.