Visit El Dorado
Live Here
Do Business Here
Chamber of Commerce
« View All News

Board approves new polling place

Posted on March 14, 2018

By Brittany Williams
Staff Writer

STRONG — The Strong-Huttig School Board approved an ad informing the public about its new polling place at its meeting Monday.

The location has changed since this year’s school board election will be “lumped in” with primary elections, administrative assistant Vera Herrin said.

“That’s May 22 at the Strong Community Center,” district Superintendent Jeff Alphin said.

According to candidate filings provided by Union County Clerk Shannon Phillips, board President Cindy Smith and board secretary Carrie McHenry are up for reelection. The Zone 3 and 5 officials are not in contested races.

Board members also approved the school district’s calendar for the 2018-2019 year, which Alphin said was the first to get unanimous consent from staff members.

“It must be really good,” the superintendent said. “The only difference is that all of the in-service, almost, is on the front end, at the beginning of school so we can go ahead, get that taken care of and use that in-service to work with our students.”

After an audit finding, Alphin requested that board approve an addendum to Daphne Holly’s employment contract.

“We had been writing a letter. Mr. (Saul) Lusk had written a letter, I’d written a letter verifying that Ms. Holly was actually an assistant coach and the auditors said they really didn’t care for the letter, that they’d rather see it as an addendum to the contract,” he said. “It was not on the contract and it’s no change in the money or anything.”

Students in grades 3-10 will take the ACT Aspire summative exam on April 12-13 and April 17-19, Principal Wendell Colen said.

High school improvement specialist Shirley Kyle said that the test will be administered over

several days, with students testing in one subject area per day.

Administering the test that way seems to work. 66 percent of Gardner Strong Elementary students met the benchmark on the third interim test. Math is the students’ weakest area, elementary school improvement specialist Becky Bolding said.

High School students are getting remediation and tutoring during the seventh class period. Teachers are students who needed 1-2 correct answers on interim tests to reach benchmarks, Kyle said.

School will be out due to teacher in-service on March 30, Colen said. Upcoming events at Gardner Strong Elementary include an awards ceremony at 2 p.m. March 29, Math & Literacy Night at 6 p.m. April 3 and ACT Aspire pep rally at 2 p.m. April

11.

The board approved the addendum as well as, four student transfer requests to El Dorado, licensed and classified salary schedules and registration and travel expenses for board member LaKenya Riley to attend the National School Board Association conference in San Antonio.

The Strong-Huttig School Board’s next meeting is scheduled at 6 p.m. April 9 in the Strong High School library.

Brittany Williams may be reached at 870-862-6611 or bwilliams@ eldoradonews.com. Follow her on Twitter and like her on Facebook @ BWilliamsEDNT for updates on Union