School board rehires Wiggins as assistant superintendent

Siloam Springs School Board members voted on Feb. 13 to extend assistant superintendent Jody Wiggins’ two-year contract through 2020.

Superintendent Ken Ramey called Wiggins a “solid and strong leader,” and said he is someone who is willing to “roll up his sleeves and work.”

Ramey said that Wiggins has worked for the school district for 17 years and his responsibilities include day-to-day operations, policy and procedure manuals, salary schedules, and overseeing classified staff, the district’s athletics programs and the district’s music programs.

“Jody, you do a tremendous job,” said Brian Lamb, school board president. “Of course, I’ve been around here a long time, and the way you’ve grown, and the way you’ve grown with the job, it’s really nice to see. It’s been outstanding work and we appreciate you.”

In other business, Jason Carter, child nutrition director, reported that the school district collected $81,833 in online lunch payments since EZSchoolPay was launched a year ago. The payments include $77,138 in money deposited directly into student accounts and $4,696 in convenience fees. In comparison, the district takes in an average of $35,000 to $40,000 a month in lunch money, he said.

A total of 528 patrons have signed up for EZSchoolPay, although it is impossible to know how many of them are using the service to make payments and how many of them just use it to monitor their child’s account, Carter said.

School board members urged Carter to find a way to lower the transaction fees when the program was launched last year. EZSchoolPay originally suggested a flat fee of $2.50 per transaction, but the district settled on a flat fee of $1.50 plus 2 percent of the transaction. Over the past year, the average transaction fee has totaled $2.24, which is significantly less than the originally suggested fee, Carter said.

“All of our efforts I feel are validated in the fact that we were able to save our parents money,” he said.

Carter also reported that food costs are down this year in comparison to last year even though the district is serving an average of 86 more meals per day. He credited the menu planning work of Joanna Trimble, assistant child nutrition director.

“She has done a tremendous job with planning the menus, using our USDA commodities, working with the managers to find out what menus are working, what menus aren’t working, getting rid of the menus that don’t work and adding new ones in,” he said.

Carter said that lunch prices will likely go up next year because the prices are federally driven.

“We continue to go up to the minimum amount, that is essentially what we feel is right,” he said. “You have to do it and we don’t want to do any more than we need to.”

Sarah Jones, director of the Panther Health and Wellness Clinic, and Bright Futures Siloam Springs, reported that February is school-based healthcare awareness month.

Currently the clinic has an enrollment of 2,387 patients including 1,275 children and 1,112 adults. During the fall semester, the clinic saw 1,111 medical encounters, compared to 1,929 encounters for the entire 2016/2017 school year and 684 for the 2015/2016 school year, Jones said.

“I really think (the increase is) because we’ve been able to stabilize a provider who shares a vision with us,” Jones said. “He is just doing a great job and we have stable hours, we’re open every day.”

Peter Granderson, advanced practice registered nurse, is the medical provider for the clinic. Cherie McFadin, licensed clinical social worker, and Carleen Lillich, licensed professional counselor, provide mental health services.

If parents sign a release, students can be taken directly from school to be seen in the clinic.

“We have open communication with all of our school nurses,” Jones said. “Many times if they’re not sure if a student needs an appointment, many times they’ll talk directly to Peter, which you just can’t do anywhere else.”

The clinic held a health fair in October, which had 32 vendors and 385 participants, Jones reported. During the fair, more than 233 flu vaccines were administered, she said.

Jones also reported that Bright Futures Siloam Springs collected $46,000 worth of items for the Winter Giveaway on Dec. 9, including 585 coats, 360 pairs of shoes, more than 600 pairs of socks, 3,138 food items and 300 five-pound bags of chicken. Each child that participated in the giveaway received a new coat and a new pair of shoes, and each family received a bag of groceries, she said.

A total of 219 volunteers spent 434 hours volunteering for the event, and 15 community organizations and businesses partnered with Bright Futures for the giveaway.

School board members took the following additional actions:

• Approved the district calendar for the 2018/2019 school year.

• Accepted the resignation of Megan Beckham, high school special education teacher; Jennie Pruitt, middle school special education teacher; Gene Collins, high school agriculture teacher and FFA advisor; and Lydia Collins, middle school counselor.

• Approved emergency sick leave for a teacher.

• Approved the transfer of one student from the Siloam Springs School District to the Gentry School District.