© Clinton County News

In Thursday, July 31, 2007 issue

Although the calendar on the wall says summer won’t be officially over until two-thirds of the way into September, the summer season for several hundred Clinton County children and young adults will basically come to an end late next week when they resume classes at one of the four schools that make up the Clinton County School District.

Around 1,600 students will return to the classroom next Thursday, August 7 for the start of the 2008-09 school year. Officially, school begins Wednesday, August 6 for staff only.

Although several school districts across Kentucky--including some close area districts--are facing cutbacks in many areas, even in staffing, the local school district was financially sound enough to avoid any cuts at all. However, the state budget and education funding is still a major issue in Frankfort and most school systems, including Clinton County, are literally tightening reins year-to-year hoping the state’s financial status will improve.

In Clinton County, not only did the local district avoid any cutbacks, although its budgets remain tight, some of the highlights of the 2008-09 school includes the completion of some facilities in the district that will be of benefit to hundreds of students locally.

Most noticeably will be the new Early Childhood Center, which will house Pre-School and Kindergarten in one location. The Head Start Center was already on the property, thus all three, four and five year olds will be in one centralized location.

Superintendent Mickey McFall, during an interview Monday of this week, said it stood to reason the better scenario for housing students of that age would be to put kindergarten and pre-school age children in one facility as opposed to kindergarten and fourth graders in the same building.

The move will also be of benefit to Albany Elementary, which will now become a 1-4 grade school. It will allow the former mobile units at AES to be eliminated and thus no children will have to go outside at any time to get to classrooms.

McFall noted Albany Elementary would still, without the kindergarten students, be a school of about 500 students--which is still on the high side for an elementary school.

Clinton County High School is now also the location of a new Athletic Fieldhouse. The facility, although primarily for football, will accommodate all sports programs at CCHS, and later on to some extent, even be utilized by athletes from the middle school, the superintendent added.

The facility, which also allowed a mobile unit alternative classroom to be removed, will house two classrooms for the alternative school.

McFall said those classrooms would also have state-of-the art technology and in the future would allow access of regular high school instructor’s course work to be recorded and made accessible to alternative school students in the course of their studies.

McFall also said there would be a new communications process put in place this year to allow parents to be able to communicate better and more quickly, with school officials. The OneCall Notification Plan will be put into effect a little bit later and parents will be notified of the process if they wish to participate.

The program will allow easier parent access via telephone and other communications devices.

Another plus for parents of students who will be attending the Early Childhood Center is that those younger age students will have their own bus transportation, complete with bus monitors. This will mean those younger children won’t have to ride buses with middle and high school age students.

Improving test scores in all of the schools is also an ongoing process and programs continue to be utilized to help improve student’s abilities in all areas of study.

Supt. McFall noted that mathematics had always been a more pressing concern and a primary focus for improvement. Since the implementation of the Everyday Math program at the elementary level, scores in that subject area has continued to improve. Another program, the Carnegie, was implemented at the high school level just last year.

The test scores across the district in most areas have steadily improved, and McFall noted the main focus now would be more at the student level as opposed to the grade level, with more emphasis on addressing student’s learning abilities in a one-on-one basis.

School attendance is another area in which year after year, the district strives to improve, because a student can’t learn if they aren’t in school.

Although attendance rates across the district improved during the 2007-08 school year compared to previous years, McFall said he was still “certainly not satisfied” with the overall attendance levels.

He did praise the Clinton County High School, however, for its efforts, as that school showed a significant attendance gain last year compared to the prior school year. This was done by adding some incentives to those already in place and putting some additional penalties on students who miss too many days, especially student athletes.

It is hoped that programs and incentives that were in place last year when student attendance rates began to improve will continue to work into the new 2008-09 school term.

There is one area of facility work that will be ongoing when school is in progress, the superintendent noted. Roofing repairs will be going on at the Clinton County Area Technology Center next month, but McFall noted there would be accommodations made for students during the construction process.

The annual school calendar for the 2008-09 school year is also almost a mirror to the calendar used in previous years.

The only significant date change will be around Thanksgiving, when the district will go back to having only two days off for the holiday--Thursday and Friday--as opposed to a three-day holiday which for the past few years had started the day before Thanksgiving.

The annual fall break, which coincides with the Foothills Festival weekend, will have an added day of break-time for students, as it will begin on Friday of the prior week due to a work day for staff only.

With a perfect scenario, with no school days being missed at all, school for students would end as early as May 15, 2009. However, Supt. McFall noted that up to nine school days could be missed and students would still be able to be finished with classes by the end of May, or without having to go into the month of June.