Hume superintendent to serve on curriculum development group

The calendar for the 2010-'11 school year was on the agenda for the Hume School Board at it's meeting Wednesday, Feb. 10 at 8:30 p.m. The board gave preliminary approval for the calendar, which requires a public hearing before it can receive final approval because the proposed start date is Aug. 24, and state law requires such a hearing when a district starts school sooner than 10 days before Labor Day. The hearing will be held 7:15 p.m., March 10, before the next scheduled board meeting.

The Community Teachers Association is planning a reward trip for those students scoring advanced or proficient on last years MAP tests and an incentive trip for students attending after school MAP tutoring. No decisions have been made on where or when the trips might take place.

Superintendent David Quick said that he had volunteered to serve with an association being formed by Crowder College and Missouri Southern to help develop a curriculum for Pre-K through graduate school called P20.

"I did it because I didn't see anyone from a small school volunteer and I thought it was important that small schools were represented," Quick said.

Quick said that the district was finding it difficult to reschedule events and school days disrupted by the weather. He said six of the missed snow days had been settled on but not the seventh.

"We're going to have school Feb. 15, Good Friday, and the first three days of the scheduled spring break," Quick said. "It's not settled but it's more than likely we'll add on a day at the end of the year for the seventh."

Road conditions are making it difficult to run the bus routes, and snow isn't the problem.

"I heard about the districts around us closing so I went out in my four-wheel drive and went on the bus routes," Quick said. "Some of the roads were terrible, but it wasn't snow, it was mud. In some of the places there was no bottom to the mud. We're going 2 miles out of our way on a route to avoid one spot."

Quick said he was concerned with the proposed budget cuts by the state because if they are implemented as a percentage across the board small schools will be impacted much harder than large districts.

"It makes a big difference in small schools but it doesn't in large ones," Quick said. "We get 85 percent of our funding from the state, a large district such as Joplin gets a smaller percentage of their funds from the state so a 5 percent budget cut will impact us much more. A district like Joplin could shrug it off as a small inconvenience."

Quick said of the three programs most likely to see cuts transportation was the more important.

"If I had to choose which programs to cut first I would have to say the ones that have the least effect," Quick said. "Career ladder only affects about 15 percent of teachers across the state so I'd cut summer school first, career ladder second and transportation last."