Special board meeting focuses on employee hiring, member workshop
GRAVETTE — Gravette Middle School student Grace Finley spoke to members of the Gravette School Board at the beginning of a special board meeting Monday evening, Aug. 1. Finley shared her experiences of being bullied and recommended adding an additional counselor at the middle school to help support students dealing with such situations.
Three new faculty members were introduced at the meeting. New teachers, who each gave a brief presentation about themselves and their plans for the school year, were Seth Duke, who will be teaching middle school math and science and will be assistant high school and junior high basketball coach; Leah Laramore, who will be a math teacher at Gravette High School; and Courtney Malott, who will be a special ed teacher at Gravette Upper Elementary.
Board members voted to approve the posting of the annual teacher and administrator recruitment plan to the Gravette school district website.
Members moved into executive session at 6:13 p.m. to discuss employment and returned to open session at 6:55 p.m.
After returning to open session, members voted to accept the resignations of Leslie Andreasen and Tina Wellesley.
Other votes approved the proposed pay rate schedule for all 21st Century Community Learning Center grant employees and the compensation package for substitute teachers during the 2022-2023 school year. Substitute teachers will be paid from the operating budget and will be provided free lunch on the days they work in the district.
Board members approved hiring Amanda Lester and Neka Lundquist as 21st Century site coordinators, Edward Griffith
as assistant yearbook sponsor, Dave Clark as a bus driver, Samantha Pritchett as a special ed paraprofessional, Melissa Keller as a half-time library aide at Gravette High School, Arissa Blakeslee as kitchen manager at GHS, Natalie Renaud as Careers teacher at Gravette Middle School, Andrea DeVaney as a fifthgrade teacher at Upper Elementary School, Brenda Mize as a one-year-only counselor at GUE, Claire Jones as a second-grade teacher at Glenn Duffy Elementary, Emily Wagner as registrar at GDE, Melissa Williams as a lunch duty aide for GDE, and Emily Barnes, Courtney Roughton, Julie Chernota, Carissa Lewallen, Danielle Brewer, Brittany Hoppe and Megan Milford as kindergarten back-to-school support aides.
In other action, board members approved the involuntary transfer of Amanda Carnahan to serve as a CCEIS grant special education paraprofessional at Gravette Upper Elementary School, the involuntary transfer and additional coaching role for Addison Masters as an assistant varsity basketball coach, the involuntary transfer of Grace Dougan from a oneyear-only ESSER funded physical education position to middle school physical education teacher and head junior high basketball coach/assistant varsity basketball coach and the voluntary transfer of Tabby Crane to serve as a CCEIS grant/ESSER counselor at Gravette Middle School.
Superintendent Maribel Childress conducted a Vision, Mission and Truths workshop with board members, asking each one to give input about what they saw as the vision of the district and what their expectations were for Gravette district employees and how they should behave. She said the purpose of the board is to develop and adopt policies that affect the vision of the district and have goals to support that vision. Thus the district needs a vision statement, a mission statement and a set of truths that affect district workers each day. She said she would be conducting the same workshop with district employees in the coming week.
Childress has been giving an employment update at each recent board meeting. She asked members for their opinion on whether additional teachers should be hired if enrollment exceeds mandated class sizes. Board members agreed that, in order to be wise stewards of the taxpayers’ money, they would prefer making use of split classes rather than hiring more teachers.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:19 p.m.