The Goodrich ISD school board received news on student transfers and maintenance, met the new athletic director, and heard about an audit in May’s regular meeting Thursday in the administration building.
Goodrich Superintendent Daniel Barton said the schools have received 30 new student transfer requests for the next academic year.
“It’s a good thing we’re becoming a destination district again. It has been that before and we are again, and that’s thanks to all of you,” he said to the board.
Principal Brenda Langley added that the students weren’t all in the elementary. Normally, the school sees the majority of transfers amongst the youngest students.
“We’re getting some middle school and high school kids too, so that’s definitely a plus for us,” she said.
“Theoretically, that’s going to push us around 300 kids, where we should kick off next year,” Barton said. “So, that’s good, and good for our district, and speaks well for our district.”
Greg Devers was introduced as the school’s new athletic director. He has coached in and around Houston for decades, and has most recently had stops at Coldspring, Corrigan-Camden and Hardin. He has experience at both large and small schools, and had success taking teams to the state tournament.
“It wasn’t too hard of a selection,” Barton said of the hire. “If you see his resume, it’s a very, very impressive resume. You can tell just interviewing and visiting with him, he’s extremely wise. He knows pretty much everybody in the business in this country and he is highly thought of by his peers and administrators all over. Some of the comments that I got when I first started talking to people about Mr. Devers was, ‘If you can get him, that’s what you’re after.’”
Finance Manager Sarah Bacica said the district was chosen for a TEA audit on the Title I program. They met with TEA earlier Thursday.
“The reason we were chosen is because it’s called a flash audit,” Bacica said. “We only have 10 days to meet with them and get all of our stuff turned back in. What that means is they’re only focusing on a certain amount of things and we’re in that category, because we have not been audited in so long. They do flash audits for low to moderate risk. If you’re a high-risk district, they do full audits. So, for low and moderate risk like we are, they just do these flash audits. They’re trying to catch up, because we haven’t been audited in so long. We’re working through that process as we speak.”
The finance office has until June 2 to complete the information needed for the audit.
Barton said plans for the athletic facility are 100% finished.
“They’ve been turned over to the construction company and they’re working up a final cost estimate,” the superintendent said. “They weren’t able to make it tonight. I mentioned to some earlier they didn’t come with a cost estimate quick enough, because I think they only got the plan, as I recall, last Monday. As soon as they do, there may be the possibility we need to try to call a special board meeting to review it and try to approve it or not. It just depends on when it comes in as to how far out it is. Of course, assuming it is approvable, the sooner we get that done, then obviously they can hopefully get us on schedule and start.”
Both gymnasium floors are scheduled for resurfacing work on June 12.
The Goodrich ISD school board has been nominated as the Region 6 Board of the Year. Staff have worked on the application to nominate the board.
“I’ll just say the same thing I told them at Region 6 and I told everybody around here. I was like, ‘If we can communicate what we’ve accomplished or this board has accomplished, if we can communicate that, they’re going to win,’” Barton said. “So hopefully we’ve done a good job of communicating all of the good things that have happened over the last four and five years.”
The board approved June 18 and July 30 as the regular meeting dates in summer.
