WHS student activity gets $5o0o from Sodexo while Lena Dunn has received well over a million dollars on grants.
To lead things off at Thursday’s meeting, Sodexo, the school systems food service provider, presented a $5000 grand prize to the WHS student activity fund. WHS students earned the award by making better healthy food choices than the students in over 200 other schools served by Sodexo.
After that, Lena Dunn Elementary Principal Jeanette Lobeck told the Board that the School had received a 21st Century Learning Grant of $646,000. Lena Dunn also received a $757,000 Early Learning Grant.
Lobeck said that children in high poverty areas often lack books and other pre-school educational resources at home. She reported that
90% of Lena Dunn’s kindergarten students enter school drastically behind in their readiness for school. Lobeck says she hopes the programs and additional staff funded by the grants will help remedy the problem.
Lobeck said the grants will fund a Pre-K program, providing students with essential life skills every child needs, and an after-school program. While the focus of the Early Learning Grant is students in Kindergarten through the third grade, Lobeck also says it is important to bring the students in grades 4 to six up to speed so they are not at a disadvantage when they enter junior high school. Lobeck also says there are already plans to continue the programs when the grant money expires in four years.
In other business
The Washington Community School Board heard that a leak in the high school auditorium was caused by last year’s hail storm and the roof over the classroom and auditorium sections of the high school will need to be replaced.
Bonds to fund the purchase of new school busses and a bus barn have been sold with First Financial Bank getting the six-year bonds with an interest rate of 2.347%.
