Education notebook
Teacher of Year to take state job
Meghan Ables will complete her year as Arkansas’ 2016 Teacher of the Year at the end of next month and start a new job with the Arkansas Department of Education.
Ables will be a public information manager for the state agency at an annual salary of $57,806, Education Department spokesman Kimberly Friedman said Friday.
In that role, Ables will be a lead writer and coordinator of statewide teacher and student award programs, including the annual Teacher of the Year competition.
Ables had been an 11thgrade English and journalism teacher for more than a dozen years at her alma mater, Stuttgart High School, when she was selected in December 2015 to be the 2016 Teacher of the Year. The state’s teachers of the year receive a leave of absence from their classroom duties to visit other schools, serve as a nonvoting member of the Arkansas Board of Education and compete in the national Teacher of the Year contest.
Ables has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Arkansas State University. She acquired a state teaching license through the state’s nontraditional teacher licensure program.
For Helena safety, demolitions urged
After the fatal shooting last month of a 15-year-old ninth-grader, the Helena-West Helena School Board has urged city leaders to use what will be a district-paid building permit fee for demolition of blighted buildings.
A resolution passed by the School Board noted a correlation between crime and the presence of blighted properties, and that removal of the blight and stricter code enforcement can be factors in reducing crime.
Andrew Bagley, president of the school board, said Friday that the amount of the permit fee is not yet known for the construction of a new building at the city’s Central High School. However, the one-time permit fee for an earlier new school building was $80,000. The first building is only about a third of the size of the planned high school building.
Quantavavious Stringer was shot to death April 16 on the front porch of a home in Helena-West Helena. Police said at the time that the shooting appeared to be related to an ongoing feud among several gangs.
Forest Park team wins stocks game
A team from the Little Rock School District’s Forest Park Elementary School was the top-performing team in the spring 2017 Stock Market Game, an investment simulation competition for students in fourth through 12th grades.
The game challenges students to grow a hypothetical stock portfolio of $100,000 over a 10-week period.
The Forest Park team of Robert Hodges and Thomas Mayfield, who were advised by teacher Jason Finney, saw a return of more than 20 percent on their portfolio.
Almost 2,770 teams — made up of approximately 4,500 students — participated in the spring 2017 competition. The first- and second-place winners at the elementary, junior high and high school levels from each of five regions of the state received cash awards and trophies during a recent luncheon hosted by Economics Arkansas at Verizon Arena.
The game is owned by the Securities Industry Financial Markets Association and has been franchised to Economics Arkansas since 1999. The game is designed to teach saving and investing while also enhancing students’ math, business, communication, economics and analytical skills.
Tim Guest of Little Rock Central High School won in the teachers’ division.