BOARD NOTES
Regular Meeting
November 10, 2003
The Franklin County school board named a new principal for Riverside Elementary Magnet School Monday night, adopted a school-year calendar for next year, and approved $7,000 in bonus money for the superintendent.
Brooke Batchelor Wheeler, a Youngsville native and 1991graduate of Bunn High School, will be the new principal of Riverside, replacing Gretta Dula, who will leave at the end of the year to take a principalship with Durham County Schools. Wheeler received her undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and her Masters in School Administration from North Carolina State University. As North Carolina Principal Fellow, she served her internship at Louisburg Elementary School and is currently the assistant principal at Laurel Mill Elementary School. She has taught middle school science and language arts at Edward Best, Zebulon Middle School and Cedar Creek Middle School. She and her husband Ken Wheeler have two children, Reid and Trent. She is the daughter of Judy Hutter of Lynchburg, Va. and the late Clay A. Batchelor of Youngsville.
The 2004-2005 school-year calendar will have students starting a few days later next year, on August 9, and still finishes first semester before the Christmas break on Dec. 22. Spring break will come the week following Easter on March 28. The last day for students will be May 24. Recent history has taught the schools to schedule make-up days for inclement weather and the calendar has built in six makeup days without jeopardizing graduation the last weekend in May.
Superintendent Dr. Carl Harris received a nice bonus after
the board reviewed his goals for last school year. He was given eight goals in
four areas for a possible total of $9,000. In the area of achievement. the
goals that were met were: (1) LHS
performance composite at 60 percent or higher – LHS posted a 65.7 percent composite; (2) close the achievement gap
between black and white students by 10 percentage points – the gap was closed by 19.1 percentage points; and (3) the
countywide performance composite will increase 3 points in both elementary and
high school testing – the elementary
composite increased by 7.4 percentage points and the high schools increased 4.9
points.
In the area of dropouts, the goal was to reduce the number of males dropping out by 10 percent. Dropouts were actually reduced by 14 percent.
In the area of discipline, the board set two goals in lower the number of students who are repeatedly suspended. Overall, the number in middle and high schools did not decrease; however, the second goal, to reduced repeat offenders at Louisburg High school to under 50 percent was met.
Only one of the two attendance area goals were met. Louisburg High, Franklinton High, and Bunn Middle, which all had excessive absences in 2001-02, were to develop and implement a plan to reduce absences of 10 or more days. This goal was met, however, the goal of reducing districtwide absences of 10 or more days by 10 percent was not met.
Altogether, the board awarded Dr. Harris $7,000 in bonuses.
In other business, the board approved a field trip for the Laurel Mill fourth grade class to Beaufort, N.C. March 19-20 to visit Duke University’s Marine Biology lab.
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