County BOE approves calendar, teacher raise

April 22--HAZARD-The Perry County School Board met on Thursday for its regularly called meeting to discuss next year's school calendar, as well as school reports.

Along with regular business, the board was set to receive an academic review of Perry County Central High School (PCC) following the visit from the state.

PCC Principal Neal Feltner was on hand to present the report to the board.

Feltner said he felt positive about the review, but the school was still waiting on the results.

"From all indications that went really, really well," Feltner said.

Feltner said last year he reported to the school board that he felt that the juniors would be able to score a composite of 19 on the ACT.

"We've got all the scores back but 11 kids ... and the composite right now is 18.71," he said.

Feltner went on to state that this was an increase from last year's score.

"Last year was 17.3, and 0.3 is considered a significant gain so to be five times that is huge for our school," Feltner explained.

Feltner also petitioned the board on behalf of the senior class to allow the class to graduate on the new football field on the evening of June 8.

The board unanimously approved the move for the graduation location and time.

In the event of inclement weather, the graduation would be held in the John C. Combs Arena as in previous years.

Jody Maggard, finance officer for the Perry County School District was on hand with several agenda items. One of these items was a raise that the legislature strongly recommended the board approve for all certified staff. The raise was originally slated to come in two parts, a two percent raise this year and a one percent raise next year.

"The legislature decided to flip those to lessen the burden on the school board," Maggard said.

The board voted to unanimously to implement the raise. This would be the first increase in several years for certified staff members.

Maggard also asked the board to approve to submit the capital outlay usage request form in order to allow usage of the approximately $300,000 in capital outlay funds to be used to demolish Dennis Wooton Elementary.

Maggard said he was waiting to see if they needed to use the capital outlay fund for maintenance for any of the schools which is what those funds are normally used for before making the decision to use those funds to demolish the school.

"Insurance is not going to cover that building next year," Maggard stated, which would make it necessary to tear down the building to remove the liability danger to the school board.

The board voted unanimously to approve the request form. A definite date to demolish the building has not been set at this time.

A big item on the agenda was consideration and approval for the 2014-2015 school calendar. Superintendent of Schools for Perry County Jody Maggard presented the calendar to the board. Some changes to the calendar for the upcoming school year are that Thanksgiving break will be Thursday and Friday only, rather than the previous year's Wednesday through Friday.

"The one thing that I really like about the calendar is that the first semester will end a week before Christmas break and that gives us some flexibility if we have a couple of days of snow or we get into some sickness where we would have to cancel some classes," Jett said.

Jett went on to say that the weather this school year had a significant impact on final exams for students.

"This year we were into February trying to get final exams given at our two high schools because of the weather," Maggard said.

According to the calendar, the first day for students will be August 7 and school would dismiss for the summer on Friday, May 1, 2015, if no days were missed.

The board was unanimous in it's approval on the calendar for Perry County Schools.

Gwendolyn Holliday can be reached at 606-436-5771, or on Twiter @HazardHerald.

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