Salem Grade School Superintendent Dr. Leslie Foppe says a survey of teachers showed 75 percent favored using e-learning days whenever school has to be called because of bad weather. Most of the other 25 percent favored a combination of snow and e-learning days. More than 96 percent of the teachers felt it was not difficult to teach using e-learning.
Foppe says the information is data that can be used to update their e-learning plan before the start of the next school year.
“With the e-learning plan when we first developed it, everything was so new. We’ve learned a lot from it. We’ll be looking at it and adjusting and preparing it from the knowledge that we have now. We feel better prepared and more knowledgeable moving forward. That will need to be approved before the start of school in the fall.”
Foppe notes they can only use five e-learning days a year. They do not need to be made up like the snow days.
One board member, Jason Smith, thought it would be best to have a snow day the first day of every storm so parents had more time to prepare their kids for e-learning the rest of the storm.
Foppe says she has heard no complaints from parents about working with the teachers and their students with e-learning. She hopes parents will reach out if they have concerns.
Foppe is also frustrated with anonymous letters indicating there are problems with traffic control on roads around the school.
“Everyone needs to abide by the signage in our district. If you’re on the property you need low speed, you need to stop at the stop signs, you need to watch where you are going, and make sure you enter where says to enter and exit where it says to exit. Employees, keep your speed down and watch for kids. Our number one priority is the safety of our students.”
Foppe says a review of the camera video has not found any violations, but she wants to hear from those who have issues with driving on the school campus.
- Kayla Cripps, Haylee Helm, and Kim Shelton on tenure.
- All non-tenured teachers were hired for another year.
- Megan Ryce was hired to a new position for Special Education Teacher at Franklin Park.
- Amber Metcalf was approved as a volunteer track coach for both the boy’s and girls’ teams.
- A letter of resignation was accepted from Haylee Helm as Head Coach of the Girl’s Cross Country team.
- Karessa Boles submitted her letter of intent to retire in three years, at the end of the 2025-26 school year.
