Hamilton School District discusses fiber optics as an Internet alternative
The Hamilton Board of Education held their monthly meeting Sept. 21. All members of the board were present with the exception of Dayrel Adkison and Jessica Green.
The board evaluated the school’s safety policy. The strengths of the program are as follows: The school has a strong code of conduct enforced by the administrators, adheres to a violence prevention program, has a good camera security system, and they have an entire notebook on what to do in crisis situations. A negative aspect is that no school is 100% safe from violence, but Superintendent Ford said safety is the school’s number one priority. The program was ranked a 4-1/2 out of 5.
Ford discussed the evaluation of career education. Some of the strengths of the program are as follows: The district had seven FFA students that received State FFA degrees. The district’s TSA scores are higher than the state and national levels, the school has active members in FFA and FBLA, the district utilizes the vocational enhancement grant each year, and 15 students exhibited at the State Fair. A negative aspect is that the Internet technology malfunctions often in the Ag room, which can be frustrating. Ford said that all Internet access runs off the school’s server and they are currently able to fix the malfunctions when they occur. The Internet problem is shared within the whole town and is not just an issue of the school district. Board member, Will Railsback, said that fiber optics is coming to Hamilton and suggested that the district look into that choice. Some of the businesses in town have it now and he said the technology is much better and the bandwidth is massive. He added that Internet providers get grant money from the government to run fiber to homeowners that want it.
The board discussed new guttering on the high school. Ford said that they will bid it out by the foot; the biggest part of that would be for labor. Bids are all supposed to be in by October 6. Most of the bids that are coming back are putting the cost between $40 to $60,000, just for a section of the south building where the brick has broken down and needs tuck pointing. A lot of the wood under the soffit vents had rotted out and needs to be replaced.
The district is in the process of looking for some storage for the new wrestling mat and Ford said that had been difficult to find. He said that if they cannot find the storage they need, they would like to move in a small storage shed to relieve some of the storage currently being used in the schools. The board agreed to have Ford move forward on this project.
The board agreed to move the teacher in-service day from Sept. 23 to Sept. 26 because homecoming was scheduled for the 23rd.
Ford said in his administrative report that the counselors are working on test scores for the district and are looking over individual results. The district’s annual performance report will be out on Nov. 1st. This past year the district’s annual daily attendance increased by 12 students. In other business, Ford said he had been going to the Hazard Mitigation Plan meetings in Kingston. One thing that was discussed at the meeting was that each group has to come up with some type of hazard mitigation plan. If they do this, that will make them eligible down the road to apply for a grant for a safe room or tornado type shelter. Ford said that in case of power outages, the school does not have any generators. He said there are all types of generators at the State’s surplus, and he said it would be worth looking in to. The board discussed the steps needed to adapt the current electrical system to take on the use of a generator.
With no further business to publicly discuss, the board went in to closed session.
