Pam Dudding
Contributing writer
Craig County is a small division, yet it continues to hire teachers who possess a love of teaching children, especially for helping them excel in life.
Principal Susan Stimeling shared that Craig County High School was recognized as exceeding the Six of Six Performance Outcome Standards for the class of 2022.
National Performance Outcome Standards included graduation rate, employment rate, positive outcome rate, fulltime jobs rate, connectivity rate and fulltime placement rate.
Stimeling explained what Jobs for Virginians is about.
“For several years we taught this through a class and used this opportunity to help young people who do not attend BTEC to understand career readiness, work force readiness, ability to deal with people and to speak in public or to stand in front of a crowd,” Stimeling explained. “We no longer teach it as a fulltime class but teach on an individual level and it is quite a bit of recording that needs to be done and contacts that have to be made throughout the school years.”
She added that after school graduation, students are still tracked for one year of where they have gone, what they have done, whether entered the military or workforce, chose a to attend college or not in any work force.
“This certificate of recognition has nothing to do with me, as I am just the voice. This recognition has been received because of two people I have on my staff, Jayke Dowdy and Shaeleigh Looney,” Stimeling announced. “Dowdy is our high school coordinator, and our JV coordinator and Looney is one of our coordinators in the middle school.”
She added, “Dowdy tracks, places, reports, and works with kids, along with many aspects of this recognition that he takes care of. Looney also teaches the class in seventh grade for career readiness and life skills. This is an award that they have earned.”
Stimeling said, “Jobs for America’s Graduate, is a National Award and we have also received that through the Jobs for Virginia Graduates, which is the National Six of Six Recognition which states, “Craig County High School is recognized for outstanding performance and accomplishments in exceeding Six of Six for the National Performance of Goals for the class of 2022”.”
Superintendent Dwayne Huff added that not only was this a great award, but it meant an additional $30,000 for each school that received it. “I am very proud of this accomplishment, as it is a huge benefit to our school and our students.”
Other agenda items were discussed and voted on for approval.
Huff gave an update on the facilities maintenance projects:
- Contracts from Thompson and Litton are almost complete
- Cafeteria unit on top of the building is almost complete but they did not have all of the things needed to flash it in, so they could not set it up. They will have materials and set it on afternoon and the weekend for completion and then hook up
- The supplemental cooling and heat rental unit will be dismantled at the same time, using the crane that they will have there
- The gym floor is beautiful and have played some volleyball games on it as it is basically done
- The ramps that go into the entrance are in place, but Thompson and Litton are making sure they’re ADA compliant
Huff shared that they are now talking about adding a bus garage on site of the CCPS campus.
The bus garage that is used now is still under county ownership.
“I visited it yesterday and did a walk-thru and it has a lot of limitations,” he said. “I am hoping, depending on our budget books and our 6-year plan looks, that we might be able to bring the bus garage here on site.”
There are several reasons why he added, “Security being one as day before yesterday, someone helped themselves to all of the fuses they had in the fuse panel. Luckily that is all they took. We were not able to catch who did that by camera. Also, it would make more sense for convenience and hope that in the long term it will be a savings, not just for the county but as a whole. Fuel has been an issue for a long time and there are pros and cons of that. We hope to look in the future to house bigger fuel tanks for both gas and diesel that might benefit others such as EMS, police and such. We want to the process of looking at this and do a feasibility study.”
Huff spoke of one of the new initiatives that the governor has created called an “All In” initiative or referred to as the tutoring play book.
“It is high intensity in academic,” he said. “Once they did the research from post pandemic, that we understand there was a major learning loss during covid and still continues and so they are trying to turn the tide, to not only prevent further learning loss but to catch these students up.”
This has affected primarily grades three through eight.
“The governor has allotted approximately $418 million. CCPS portion about $191,000 and is designed to pay teachers for different blocks for before and after school tutoring,” Huff said. “We can hire retired teachers and other educational professionals and help to tutor those students who are lagging behind and we hope to start Nov. 1.”
He added, “We will send a letter to parents, trying to use it as a survey to let them know what it is about and what we can do to help the child the most, whether in school tutoring, after school tutoring and if they need transportation to get the child to and from school as we know that will be a challenge for some.”
“This is a good thing coming down the pipe that will hopefully help some of the learning loss that has come from the pandemic,” Huff said.
Huff stated that Heather Duncan had completed the financial report by the end of September as well as the audit for cash receipts and disbursements.
“Now that we have these reports done, we will try to incorporate it into our 6-year plan,” Huff reported. “This is our priority, and we know the 6-year plan is due to you by November and we will have it at next months meeting.”
He added that the state has proposed another 2% raise for all SOQ employees.
“The good news is that because of the generosity you had the prior two years, we have met the requirements of the state already as they require five percent in two years and you certainly surpassed that, but we will look at this very close and make recommendations of whether we choose to include all employees or only instructional personnel or to only SOQ positions,” Huff said.
This raise would start in January.
The next monthly school board meeting will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 14 at CCPS in the auditorium at 5:30 p.m.
