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Swain has closed out-of-district enrollment for some grade levels at some of its schools including ninth-grade at Swain High
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
Overcrowding at some local schools led the Swain County School Board to vote Monday night, Aug. 14, to cap admissions for new out-of-district students at those schools.
According to Superintendent Mark Sale, the number of students was at 100% for kindergarten at West Elementary and East Elementary and at 107% for first grade at West Elementary.
Sale said they would still be accepting new local students, but they had to cap off the amount of out-of-district transfers because they were at risk of overburdening teachers and staff.
“I want to serve every student I possibly can, but our Swain County students need to come first. And we have to take care of our staff,” Sale said.
Sale initially said the high school might be approaching a similar risk, but principal Sonya Blankenship, who was sitting in on the meeting, said that risk was already there, and that several classes, such as English I were approaching the threshold for the maximum number of students that could be in the class.
Because of that, Sale also requested to close the high school freshman class to any more out-of-district transfers for the year. “We don’t need to accept any more freshmen. Just so we don’t overload those classes too much,” he said.
School board members Lisa Loftis and Gerald McKinney questioned what could be done about the issue, including potentially hiring more teachers.
“We’re going to have to go to the county,” McKinney said. “We need support, our kids need the support.”
Sale said they were still waiting on the state budget which could provide more raises for teachers. But he said the best idea would be to go with the local government to see what immediate help is available. “I think they’d listen to us.”
McKinney added that some of the issue with out-of-district students came from new employees bringing their children with them when they begin working in the county.
The board voted to allow Sale to impose the restrictions.
CEP update
The school board also heard an update on the CEP program, or Community Eligibility Provision, which they voted to adopt earlier in the year. The program will provide free lunches and breakfasts for any student of the county schools who wants one.
The issue with CEP is that the meals are reimbursed from funds by the state North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI), and if not enough are eaten, the county will have to pay to make up the difference.
Because of that, nutrition director Michele Herron has been working to find the best ways to increase participation. The school district has sent out surveys to students to find out what would entice them to eat free meals more often at the schools.
There have been some wrinkles in the plan, however – Herron said the reimbursement rates for CEP meals have lowered lately, which means the school will get less money back for the meals from the state program.
Other issues were compounding, too, including higher health insurance for school employees, retirement expenses and potentially mandated salary increases, which would add further costs for the school.
All of it meant that “participation [in CEP] needs to increase,” Herron said. They want to get elementary school lunch participation up to 90% - currently, East is at 81% and West is at 75%. For high school they want to get 50% participation this year, up from 37% last year.
To help entice students to eat more meals at school, Herron said they were adding new gimmicks for lunch – “Tailgate Friday,” “Taco Tuesdays” and more variety such as having both burgers and chicken sandwiches available. There will also be “Maroon Devil chicken,” or boneless buffalo wings that Herron said will “hopefully affect” high school participation.
She said there would also be new brioche buns added after complaints about only brown bread being available before.
They’ll also add “second chance” breakfasts for students who missed the first round. In addition, there will also be more snacks available for students not wanting to sit and eat a full meal for breakfast in the mornings.
“Not everyone is hungry first thing in the morning. A lot of people said that on the survey, that they didn’t want to eat. But sometimes they need something to get through first period,” Herron said.
Board members talked about how to raise awareness of the new CEP options, including posting on Facebook about it and handing out fliers at Open House this year. Loftis said having physical memos would be a good idea as “not everyone is online,” which the rest of the board agreed with.
Administrative changes
The beginning of the meeting saw Sale going over some administrative changes to the school code.
He gave an update from the previous meeting, at which he wanted to find out if it was possible to change the rules on long-term suspensions for students. Sale wanted to make sure suspensions were equitable, since they currently all have to end at the end of each school year, except for those suspended in the fourth term of the year. Because of that, students suspended at the beginning of a year and in the third term would not be equally punished.
Sale wanted to know if it was possible to suspend students through part of the following year.
After speaking with a legal team, Sale found out that wasn’t possible – the suspensions can’t include the summer unless the summer is somehow considered part of the school year.
The board also voted to modify the policy on displaying non-school materials, looking at what students are allowed to display and trying to determine whether materials displayed by a club counted as “school-sponsored.”
Sale said clubs would not be considered “school-sponsored” and so would be subject to more review before being allowed to be distributed on school grounds.
Finally, they spoke about goals for the upcoming year under the Leader in Me program and talked about their Strategic Plan for the next five years. The goals intend to expand Swain’s success in academics as well as cultural matters.