Coaching positions filled

Hot Springs County School District’s Board of Trustees met on Tuesday evening for their April meeting, addressing several items of interest.

One of those items was staffing recommendations for the coming year.

The board accepted a resignation notice from Jill Strenger as a special education teacher at the end of this year and the resignation of Holly Mickelson as an elementary teacher.

Jerry Bowman has tendered his resignation as Transportation Director, effective June 30.

Justin Smith and Ashley Cleare will both be offered initial teaching contracts as elementary teachers for the coming year.

Parents and residents alike have been voicing concerns over the coaching positions that are changing for the 2018-19 school year and the board made a decision Tuesday night on who will be filling which slots.

Matt McPhie will be both the head football coach and the head girls basketball coach. CJ Scholl and Todd Weber will assist McPhie on the football field and Katie Despain will be the assistant girls basketball coach.

Shannon Hill will continue as the head volleyball coach, assisted once again by Cortney O’Connor.

Stephanie Metz will remain the cross country coach.

Joey Johnson will be coming on as the head golf coach.

Shane Corpening has been named the new head boys basketball coach and will be assisted by Paul Collamer.

The board named Travis McDermott head wrestling coach and will be assisted by Trey Ottley.

There were several staffing changes as well, moving some teachers from one grade to another and even some from one building to another.

Trey Ottley will be moving to the middle school to teach seventh grade English and Social Studies while Eric Kay will be moving back to the high school for English 1010/1020 and Communications.

Shane Corpening is coming from the middle school to the high school for American History/Government.

Lacy Shaffer will move from kindergarten to second grade teacher, Brock Merrill will go from kindergarten to first grade teacher. Rayann Casciato is moving from third grade to first grade and Vivian Sannes will be teaching fourth grade rather than second this year.

Dawn Peterson is moving from second grade teacher to Title I Interventionist.

The board heard a report on co-teaching in the classroom and how effective it is for student learning.

In a co-teaching environment there are two teachers in the same classroom and different models may be used to teach different concepts.

Language arts and reading have been the co-teaching focus at both RWE and the middle school and appears to be successful.

There are six basic approaches to the co-teaching concept, including station teaching, which seems to be working best in the classrooms right now. Station teaching breaks the classroom down into smaller groups and they rotate into different ‘stations’ during a lesson, giving students more one on one attention.

In these small groups, the students are more attentive and are participating more in discussions after the lesson.

Parallel teaching is another approach with both teachers teaching the same lesson, simply dividing the classroom in half. Preliminary data shows promising results.

Everyone is reminded to attend the community forum on April 30 in the auditorium at 7 p.m.

The forum will concentrate on school safety, letting residents know what steps are already in place and what steps are coming as well as a question and answer period where folks can voice any concerns they may have.