The Attala County School District approved resignations, payments, purchases, out-of-state travel, and certified teachers for the 2022-2023 school year.
After the minutes from March’s board meeting was approved, the board approved the resignations of Malcolm Fisher, Shonda Black, Alvionna Knox, and Kristen White.
The board then approved a bus easement with Catherine Harmon and received an update from Leslie Dees with the P-16 council, a community-based council to foster a quality public education system.
Dees said the P-16 council has been meeting regularly and wanted to hold a pep rally for students prior to state testing at the end of the year, but they were unable to make it happen due to time constraints. Now, according to Dees, the council would like to hold a pep rally at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year or shortly after to give students encouragement.
The board also approved teacher payments for special education tutoring hours and the purchase of a 2022 Dodge Ram 1500 for the transportation department.
Ashlyn Armstrong was approved as a teacher’s assistant at Greenlee Elementary School. Substitutes approved for the remainder of the 2021-2022 school year include Melanie Myrick and J.C. Tyler as teachers and James Jones, Shayne Elsner, Traciellya Nelson, and Marcus Graves as bus drivers.
Approved certified teachers for the 2022-2023 school year include Roy Rigsby at McAdams, along with being named head football and boys’ and girls’ powerlifting coach, Josie Bain at Greenlee Elementary, and Lisa Mason at Long Creek Elementary.
Out-of-state travel was approved for Josh Bingham, Tara Kyle, Selena Schuster, Culley Newman, Mollye Moudy, Ryan Renfrow, Josie Bain, Shanika Harmon, Carl Hatorn, and Tracy Hardy to attend a national teacher conference in Florida.
The board also voted to approve its memorandum of understanding with Life Help, a mental health facility in Kosciusko that aids students in need, along with Lean Stream, an e-commerce platform that provides unified fundraising and fee management for education.
A data sharing agreement using Brightbytes was also approved. Superintendent Hammond said the process was a part of an agreement with the Mississippi Department of Education, who supplied the district with Chromebooks using state funds. In return, the district must share its computer data with MDE.
In the Superintendent’s report, Hammond said the school board will begin making visits to each school on Thursday, April 7 to do evaluations. Hammond also reminded board members to fill out their ethics report with the state ethics commission.
