The Attala County School District made modifications to its personnel and student handbooks for the 2022-23 school year, accepted resignations, approved new hires, and approved student workers for a summer program at its recent June board meeting.
Summer student worker program
Students will be given the opportunity to work throughout the school district during the summer months and assist in a variety of ways.
Jacob Holman, Rance Allen, Pharoah Tanksley, and Malik Roby were each approved to serve as summer student workers.
Superintendent Hammond said the students are active in the Career-Technical Center and are also completing the Central Mississippi Internship.
“We’ve got some work that needs to be done on each of our campuses, and we thought it would be good to re-employ these students,” said Hammond.
Hammond said work is needed at McAdams, Ethel, Greenlee, Long Creek, and the Career-Tech Center which partly includes cleaning out and painting an old field house, along with building lockers for girls’ softball teams.
“We’ve got some other work that we’ll do once we get done with that, such as painting railings on bleachers and power washing — stuff like that,” said Hammond. “Coaches and principals are going to be supervising them. If there’s a big project we’ve got going on and we need all four of them on one campus, we’ll put them all four there, but they will always be under the supervision of either a coach or principal on campus. It’s going to be a win-win because it’s good for us — we’ll get a lot of good labor out of it. The kids are coming highly recommended from the Career Center, and they’ve been involved in some of the programs here. They’re hard workers.”
Personnel Handbook
The Attala County School Board approved changes to the district’s personnel and student handbooks for the upcoming 2022-2023 school year.
Dress Code: Regarding teacher and staff dress code, language was added to the handbook stating, “To provide professional standards, all staff must dress professionally and must adhere to the student dress code or above.”
Averaging of grades— elementary: At least three daily grades must be given to students each week and at least five-unit test grades must be administered per nine weeks.
Averaging of grades— high school: At least three daily grades must be given to students each week and at least five test grades must be administered per nine weeks.
Language was also added regarding the district’s chain of command. The new provision reads, “The established lines of authority represent direction of authority and responsibility. ACSD employees shall be told to whom he/she is responsible, and for what functions. All personnel shall refer matters requiring administrative action to the supervisor immediately in charge of the area in which the problem arises. Supervisors shall refer such matters to the next higher authority when necessary. All personnel shall keep the immediate supervisor informed of their activities. Personnel shall have the right to appeal any decision made by a supervisor through the grievance procedures established through board policy. No ACSD employee shall skip the established lines of authority and discuss issues or grievances with individuals at the top end of the organizational chart without following the grievance procedures.
For staff complaints and grievances, new language was added reading, “The purpose of the staff complaint and grievance procedure is to secure, at the first possible administrative level (thee building level administrator), and equitable solution to any grievance. The procedure can be found in School Board Policy Manual Personnel Section I.
Student Handbook
Student discipline standards: For a category 1 offense such as littering, no hall pass, loitering, running in the building, classroom disruption, or not completing work, students will first receive a warning by a teacher or administrator followed by a call to a parent and corporal punishment. The next step is in-school suspension, which can be through 1-8 class periods. Alternate education placement and out-of-school suspension (OSS) will be set for one to three days.
Six or more referrals of any combination of category 1,2 or 3 offenses will result in a 45-day alternative school placement. For physical fighting between two individuals, the first offense will be three to five days of OSS, second offense five to 10 days OSS, and the third offense will be alternative school placement for 45 days.
For physical fighting between three or more individuals, the first offense will send students directly to alternative school.
New language was added stating, “Physical fighting at extracurricular events, home or away, may result in students being banned from attending extracurricular activities for up to one calendar year as well as being placed in OSS following the above discipline ladder.”
“We want to be very upfront with our parents that we are going to have discipline in our schools,” Hammond said at the meeting. “Our students are going to follow the code of conduct, hear the consequences that are going to occur, and be very clear and concise with those consequences as they are written. I’m going to enforce with the principals that they adhere to this one hundred percent.”
Resignations and new hires
The Board accepted resignations of Amy Curtis from Greenlee Elementary and Carl Hathorn, reigning teacher of the year from
McAdams High School. Hathorn reportedly accepted a basketball coaching position in Ackerman.
Certified teachers approved for the 2022-2023 school year include Kyle Beckham for Ethel and Karey Johnson for Long Creek. Classified staff approved for the upcoming school year include Elexus Hughes as a teacher assistant at Long Creek and Raquel Johnson as an in-school suspension instructor at McAdams. Carol Denise McAdams was also approved as a food service staff member at Ethel for the upcoming school year.
CTC Local Plan
Presented by Kosciusko-Attala Career Tech Center Director Tony Holder, the Board approved the CTC’s local plan for 2023.
In the presentation, Holder said the center is set to receive $48,843 in federal funding through the Carl D. Perkins grant, federal funding provided to states and discretionary grantees for the improvement of secondary and postsecondary career and technical education programs across the country. The student service coordinator’s salary will be paid using this grant, leaving $10,851 for equipment and $6,500 for instructional supplies.
The district is also forecasted to receive $339,720 in state funding, which will be used to pay salaries at the CTC, McAdams, and Ethel, along with helping cover costs for adult vocational nursing classes.
School bus purchases
The board approved the purchase of two school buses to replace a pair that were previously disposed of. The district received roughly $20,000 in insurance claims for the disposed buses, and the new buses will cost $96,895.
“We’ve got to replace them, and we’ve got to have them on our routes,” said Superintendent Kyle Hammond at the meeting.
