The Goodrich school board met Thursday in the administration building to receive updates and approve a nutrition program and health course.
The district recently received a perfect grade of 100 for its financial integrity rating system of Texas (FIRST). The data is based on the 2023-24 school year. Finance manager Sarah Bacica said several factors go into the score, like a good audit, turning in an audit on time, and areas of district spending.
After scores were low on recent testing, principal Aubrey Vaughan has looked into math and English on the secondary level.
There are now principal check-ins, once per six weeks talking with each teacher, to review their data, their assessments, and how the students have performed.
“Every six weeks, we do a complete data review of the whole district, K-12,” Goodrich superintendent Daniel Barton said.
Goodrich received approval for a “phone free” grant of $5,000. School policy is that students are to keep their phones off and in their backpacks, and not have them out during the school day. The grant will go toward the purchase of safes for the office if the phones are confiscated. There are also pouches that keep phones locked away as an option.
A LASSO 4 grant was applied for this week for teacher residency.
“A lot of the grants we went after were for a ‘grow your own’ program,” Barton said. “And then one of them was a residency. You take a student from Sam Houston that’s on their intern year, the grant will pay $10,000, and then we match it. So, that intern would make $20,000, but it only costs us $10,000. It’s for teacher recruitment and mentorship. There’s also another one on mentorship that pays $5,000 per teacher. And it pays for each teacher that you mentor.”
One last grant applied for was between $50,000-$100,000. The state will choose just 50 schools that will receive the grant for instructional support.
In maintenance and operations, the agriculture shop is completed other than waiting on the lockers to arrive in December.
For athletic facilities, the district is waiting on bids for construction for the new fieldhouse and the track. The old gymnasium roof that had been removed was sold in a public surplus auction for a little over $3,000.
In action items, the board approved a waiver for the summer nutrition program. The summer nutrition program provides meals for students and their families five days of the week. Because of where the school is located, students would have to walk across Highway 59 or over the railroad tracks to pick up the items. Buses cannot be run to deliver the food, so the district instead partners with Shepherd ISD, where the meals are distributed.
The health program is an online course given to eighth graders who receive a high school health credit. The major topics are physical health and wellness; relationship and mental health; alcohol, tobacco and drugs; as well as dating and marriage. Parents would need to opt-in for their students to take the course, otherwise, alternative curriculum is given.
“Our health curriculum hasn’t changed, per se, it is the same as it has been. It is coming back for approval and requires approval by the board because of the instructional materials we are using,” Barton said.
The council also passed a class size waiver for kindergarten and third grade, whose classes are over 22 students. Class sizes receiving the waiver are at 23 and 24 students.
