Pam Dudding
Contributing writer
Running schools in the United States today takes much strategic planning and technology upgrades.
The Craig County School Board continues to make changes to its 6-year plan, to better serve students and staff.
Superintendent Dwayne Huff talked about the six-year plan for Craig County Public Schools at the last school board meeting.
“I really want to thank all of our faculty and staff who served on this committee. We also had folks from Radford University and BTEC sit in to help us go through and revise our six-year plan,” Huff shared. “I am very proud of the hard work that went into that, and I thank miss VanDyke, as she was a big part of that team also. There were a lot of folks that helped during that process and did a great job, and I appreciate that.”
Huff addressed the new “All-In” tutoring program. He announced that the first group had started with about 15 students, and they had about 14 or 15 teachers who expressed interest in helping with this program.
“We are paying our instructors $35 an hour if they have a degree and $25 per hour for instructors without a degree,” Huff said. “We can use instructional aids as long as they have some training on tutoring.”
Principal Susan Stimeling also has a group of retired teachers who have expressed interest.
Huff noted that they are working on getting tutoring for in-school hours as well.
“If you have had a chance to look at the six-year plan it is data-driven,” said Huff to the board. “It reflects the state report card on how we are doing, especially the specific group of children in grades three through eight who are behind. That is our target group.”
Huff met with the faculty on Election Day to stress his main objectives.
“One of those was graduation, as we wish to graduate every student, just as our mission statement states,” he said. “We also want to get our scores up so that we will be fully accredited as that should always be a main goal for us as administration and for the board.”
“The number one thing is to produce good quality citizens from this school, and to stress things like respect, kindness, compassion, empathy, and dignity as all these things reflect on these numbers. It is a situation not only for our school but many others and actually nationwide,” Huff relayed. “Along with academics, as we want to put this as first importance.”
Huff stated that they had received $191,000 from the state from the governor’s initiative, which is the funds that will be used to pay the tutors.
“We’re looking at adding a physician as a Community School coordinator or an outreach coordinator and we have a person in mind, and we want to get that started as soon as possible,” he said. “It will be addressing some of the recommendations from JD Carlin’s report. Much of that involves community outreach with parents, getting kids here to school and doing community activities. We are excited about doing that and it will be funded partially with this money.”
Huff also recognized several students and groups, for the “great work they have been doing”.
“On the front page of the paper last week was some of our students with the Rockets Cares Group who helped with the food bank and they are also looking at doing a hat and glove drive, so I’m very proud of those students,” he said. “We also have a bunch of students who are working on our Craig County Community Christmas project, where we have about 87 students that are on the list which are like Angel tree recipients that our students will be helping with. Some of our JV kids will be helping with that.”
Huff said that this is one piece of the puzzle that helps students with a sense of longing, a sense of pride, and a sense of community.
Huff went over the revised 6-year plan.
“I do wish to highlight those characteristics, those ideals that we want to stress to kids about kindness, compassion, dignity, and all those things that make model citizens,” he expressed. “We wish to push that from every faculty here. It is all of our jobs. JD refer to the fact that every member of this community and school system from our custodians and cafeteria workers as well. We never know the impact that it is going to make on our students.”
“There are other things that jumped out at us that we recognize that we need to emphasize,” said Huff. “We are trying to get back our dual enrollment and AP classes as well as kids attending governor school. These kids are talented, and we want to push that.”
Sadly, there are no students attending Governor School this year.
“We want to try to raise the bar,” Huff explained. “As our kids getting advanced students diplomas is way down currently than five years ago; we want to push a higher standard.”
Huff said that it is not just about graduating but wanting their students to also excel and exceed.
“The Plan will reflect that,” he said. “We did have some dual credit classes that did not make it as we did not have enough students enrolled. Therefore, we want to look at options for those students who still want that.”
Huff noted that attendance is a direct correlation with CCPS students being able to excel and having academic progress.
“We want to take steps to improve attendance and we are hoping that the communities schools position will assist,” he added. “Therefore, I recommend that we approve the six-year plan and also the individual schools plans.”
Though the 6-year plan has to be reviewed every two years, Huff shared that they will be looking at it all of the time.
“It is our compass board, and we will be keeping our eye on it all of the time though,” he stressed. “It will be our guiding road map to doing the things that we need to do.”
The plan will be discussed again at the next meeting.
