At Monday night’s December Swain County Board of Education meeting, newly elected members R.L. Taylor and Lisa Stoltzfus Loftis were sworn in with their families present.
Hannah Styles
hstyles@thesmokymountaintimes.com
On Monday night, the Swain County Board of Education welcomed its two newly elected members, Lisa Stoltzfus Loftis and R.L. Taylor who were sworn in at the beginning of the meeting. The board discussed an exciting addition to transportation, NC Star plans, finances, and a “skunk-like” aroma around East Elementary.
The meeting had a packed agenda and began with board member Cody White being selected 4-0 as the 2023 Board of Education Chair, previously held by member Gerald McKinney. Mitch Carson was nominated 4-0 for 2023 Vice-chair.
During the meeting, this month’s character awards were presented by teachers who selected students for the role. For Bright Adventures Pre-K Chloe Byfield was chosen for “her leadership in the classroom and always wanting to help her classmates,” her teacher said. For East Elementary Cade Dills was selected as his teacher described the first word that came to mind when they thought of him was “dependable.” West Elementary was Alexis Young because she is always polite, respectful, and caring her teacher said and Swain Middle School was Aracely Lara for always staying on top of her schoolwork, being sweet and kind to her peers.
Swain’s Karen Cook was also recognized for being selected for a prestigious honor as she was named the Regional Director of Technology of the Year.
Swain County High School and East Elementary were both given North Carolina Academic Growth awards during the meeting.
Electric bus
Under discussion topics, Superintendent Mark Sale began by speaking about a grant Swain County Schools was selected for to receive its first electric school bus. He explained that a few years ago, the company Volkswagen was fined and asked to pay millions of dollars which are being given as grants in different areas.
“We applied for one of these grants and were not selected but the state of North Carolina applied and did receive funds which we were selected for by the state,” Superintendent Sale explained.
Sale said the school has done substantial research about electric school buses as they have been watching them for a while and that they are safe, have fewer working parts than regular buses and their brake systems last longer.
This grant is for an electric bus in place of one of the school’s diesel buses.
“We have also worked with Duke Power to get a grant so that the charging station will also be at no cost to the school system and there has already been a spot designated at the high school for it,” Sale said.
“How long will the buses run on one charge?” board member R.L. Taylor asked.
“Two days on the longest route, and they also recharge themselves as they accelerate and go downhill,” Sale answered.
What’s that smell?
Next, Superintendent Sale wanted to make the board and community aware of something they are looking into at East Elementary.
“We are getting complaints of the smell of skunk at East Elementary that comes across the school at certain times of day,” Sale said. “We believe the aroma is coming from the medicinal farm on Cooper’s Creek.”
The school reached out to the health department to see if there are any health concerns associated with that and are continuing to investigate the issue.
Appointment, budgeting
“Lambert Wilson served as the School Board Appointment on the Southwestern Community College Board of Directors for about 10 years and then was Chairman of the board for a number of years. With his death we need to replace that,” Superintendent Sale explained. “The president of SCC, Don Thomas, asked that we give them a name. If the board tonight could select someone. Need to have someone from our school board sitting on their board of directors,” Sale said, recommending that the board make a decision at the meeting.
The board heard a budget audit report from Robert Brown and budget amendments from Stephanie Treadway.
NC Star Improvement
After that, the remaining Swain County schools who didn’t last month, presented their NC Star improvement plans and goals for this year.
Trish Chapman from Bright Adventures said that their goals are helping children learn about their emotional states and how to regulate them, parent communication and involvement, and are working on developmental day classrooms to help better support students.
Shawn Penland is the NC Star chairperson from West Elementary and she said they are keeping close track of progress throughout the year and are assessing best practices to get there.
“We’ve got lots of room to grow but staff and students are working hard,” West’s Principal Lisa Sutton said.
The board also heard goals from the high school and district goals from Katrina Turbyfill before going into closed session for around an hour and a half. Board member Mitch Carson made the motion to enter closed session on statute G.S. 143.318.11 subsection A1 to prevent disclosure of privileged or confidential student information 20 USC 1232 G and G.S. 115 C-402 subsection A1 to prevent disclosure of privileged or confidential personal information and G.S. 115 C-319-321 subsection A3 to discuss information protected by attorney client privilege.
After returning, the board moved to personnel where they accepted the resignation of Shailene Hall, employed Deborah Taylor, Elizabeth Green, Shawna Penland, Bowen Rance Creech, Karin Green, Katie Gunter, Lydia Sale, Brandi Sutton, Rachel Hollingsworth, Jennifer Thomas, Amber Griffin and approved several volunteers. They also approved Michael Varano as head baseball coach for Swain High School.
Then the board selected member Gerald McKinney to sit on the Southwestern Community College’s Board of Directors and approved the school’s NC Star Plans.
Students’ last half day before the holiday break is this Friday, and they will be dismissed at 11 a.m. The next regularly scheduled meeting will be Monday, January 9.