The El Dorado School Board began their meeting with a performance by the El Dorado High School band and by honoring the memory of Louis Knox White, one of the people instrumental in developing the El Dorado Promise.
“As a board we would like to acknowledge the investment Knox made in the City of El Dorado by supporting education,” school board president Renee Skinner said at the meeting. “His good will and belief in community has influenced the way people in our community work together for the greater good of the students in our district. Our board is very appreciative for everything he did, and he will be gravely missed and appreciated for all he accomplished.”
During the meeting, the board also recognized the Hugh Goodwin Elementary School student, classified employee and teacher of the month. It also approved the special education budget, heard an update about Hugh Goodwin and learned about El Dorado High School’s homecoming.
The Student of the Month at Hugh Goodwin is 3rd grader Luke Vinson, who wants to be a professional baseball player when he gets older. The Classified Employee of the Month is Patti VanSickle, who is a paraprofessional, and the Teacher of the Month is math and science teacher Joely Jackson.
Jackson began the farm-to-school program with a grant from the El Dorado Education Foundation, which was recognized during Principal Jessica Collins’ update from the school.
Hugh Goodwin, which received an A from the Arkansas Department of Education, also started keeping chickens in its courtyard, which won 1st and 2nd place at the county fair as well as a picnic area for students.
The school will also add number squares for students to walk on in the courtyard as well as a sensory garden that will feature plants students can taste, touch, smell, see and hear.
Collins also had Kathy Sixbey, the literacy instruction facilitator at Hugh Goodwin, and two other teachers demonstrate phonemic awareness for the board. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words.
“We are trying to hit all the important parts of making a child or helping a child become a reader,” Sixbey said.
Sixbey said phonemic awareness should be mastered in kindergarten and first grade and is the foundation for knowing how to read.
Sixbey and the other teachers walked the board through phonemic exercises, including using rhyme recognition and segmenting syllables. For segmenting syllables, students put their hands together, or their “choppers,” and move their hands up and down with each syllable. Then the student slices through the word in the air, crossing their midline.
“It gets the left and right hemisphere of the brain working together, which helps fine motor skills, coordination and reading from left to right,” Sixbey said.
The board also heard from EHS student council vice president Erinn Roblee, who discussed homecoming, which is next week for the Wildcats. The theme this year is “seasons.”
The board also approved $1,172,415.92 for the Title VI-B special education department budget.
Shawn Lamkin, the special education director for the district, said she estimated about $50,000 for indirect costs (like electricity, water/sewage, insurance, etc.), which is $20,000 less than previous years. She said she used to budget $70,000 to be cautious.
Lamkin also said she’s preparing to order C-Pens, which cost about $250 a piece. C-Pens are a portable scanning pen that reads printed text out loud. Lamkin said this is a tool the state is looking into to use for state testing. She said the money would come out of the ARMAC budget, which is slated for $333,979.17.
The board will have its next meeting in November.