Strong coach reassigned to elementary administration

STRONG — At the Strong-Huttig School Board’s meeting on Monday, Strong High School Coach Greg Anthony was reassigned as the Gardner Strong Elementary Dean of Students.

In addition to the administrative role, Coach Anthony will teach high school health and physical education and retain all of his coaching duties during the 2017-2018 school year, superintendent Jeff Alphin said.

High school improvement specialist Shirley Kyle said that high school students, particularly targeted seventh graders, were tutored during seventh period classes before the ACT Aspire exam. Students who were not identified as “close” were tutored as well.

“The seventh grade took the test last week and I really feel like they were being honest with me when I talked to them … They said, ‘We have been over everything that was on the English test. We knew what they were asking us, but the passages were boring (on the reading test),” Kyle said. “The writing portion of it I was surprised really at. They said, ‘We enjoyed the writing part of it. It was kind of fun what they asked us to write on.”

Groups have differing opinions about the science and math exams, but she is hopeful that they performed well on the standardized test. Fourth and eighth graders started testing Monday. Gardner Strong Elementary hosted an ACT Aspire pep rally to get students motivated, Principal Dr. Wendell Colen said.

Kyle said that students take two subject tests a day and the testing period lasts about two hours per day. School board president Cindy Smith was concerned with the speediness of the testing.

Though the district isn’t labeled as “academically distressed,” Strong High School bears that label for underperforming on state-mandated standardized tests. The Strong-Huttig School District received a waiver to operate with low enrollment as long as it doesn’t have that label, according to a previous report by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

“I don’t want to get at 48.3 percent if there was anything that we could do different,” Smith said. “We did it two days last year. Look at where we are … What we did last year didn’t work. It’s on

paper.”

Smith said, “The reason I’m questioning this is because there was a situation with the second grade testing the week before last … Instead of exhausting them for two days, could we have expanded it to three days?”

Colen said, “Yeah. We could’ve.”

Counselor Shakita Story said, “The state gives you and two-week window and we can do it in that two-week window.”

Students in grades 3-10 take the computer based ACT Aspire, while grades 1-2 take the multiple choice Iowa Assessments and 11th graders take the ACT college entrance exam. According to the Arkansas Board of Education, high school students also take end-ofcourse exams in Algebra I, Geometry and Biology. Students in Advanced Placement courses also take exams near the end of the school year.

When asked if that would cause test fatigue, Kyle said, “They’re just testing from like 8:30 to about 10:30 and this time they didn’t seem like they were getting exhausted … When we were giving the (ACT Aspire) interim tests, we had some problems with technology and we did try to push more time in on it … They did complain about that. That’s why when we did the last interim test, we broke it up into little chunks.”

After an executive session, the board ultimately approved to rehire elementary school improvement specialist Rebecca Bolding and Kyle. Board member LaKenya Riley voted against the hires. Both school improvement specialists will return next school year pending Arkansas Department of Education approval.

The Strong-Huttig School Board accepted the resignations of elementary teacher Radiance Peterson and special education teacher LaSandra WilliamsJackson, effective at the end of their contracts. The board also rehired all recommended licensed and classified personnel for the 20172018 school year.

The district’s school calendar was voted on by teachers and staff including bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

The Strong-Huttig School Board’s next meeting is scheduled at 6 p.m. Monday, May 15, in the Strong High School library.