Carr places 10th in FBLA

Monday night, the Armorel School Board and their newly appointed Superintendent Jennifer Barbaree held their regular monthly meeting and discussed student achievement, policy changes and updates on gymnasium renovation. All board members were present except for Board President Susan Hughes and Board Member Dale Cook.

Armorel senior McKinley Carr gave a presentation to the board, regarding her achievements at the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) National Leadership Conference in Anaheim, California. Carr placed 10th out of 13,000 people (largest attendance for a FBLA National Conference ever).

“A couple of weeks ago I got to go to the national conference and compete in word processing in Anaheim, California. I competed against people from Haiti, Guam, all of the states and China. And I got tenth and this was the largest attendance with 13,000 people,” Carr said. “I had to take a multiple choice test on Microsoft Word and then type business letters, personal letter, memos, agendas and table of contents.”

Keith Chunn, of Tate Construction, gave his monthly update on the gym lobby renovation, and although some renovation problems have occurred, as well as unexpected weather conditions and a lost day for the Fourth of July occurred this month, Chunn told the board he believes the project to be about a week behind.

“We are not in bad shape at all,” Chunn said.

“Typically I put together a construction schedule and it’s just my best guess on day one and Scott (Jowers) understands that. I don’t have a magic ball telling me what the weather is going to do the next six months and how it’s going to impact things. And then exactly this tray has to go before that tray when I thought it was this one first, when I first was looking at the job,” Chunn explained. “And we have had a lot of that the last few weeks.”

“I thought the steel erection would start a little sooner than what it did, but we had to get the blocks farther along, for if we started the steel erection then it would almost be physically impossible to get this block work done,” Chunn said. “So block work is really what ya’ll have seen happen ….the slab has been completed…and we’ve been doing block work the last two and a half to three weeks.”

“I thought about a week ago we would start steel work, it started today (Monday)…When I put this schedule together I put that it would start last Monday, so we are about a week behind were I had hoped to be,” Chunn exclaimed. “But we are not bad at all with our schedule and I’m still optimistic with the way things are headed right now.”

Chunn told the board the next four weeks should include continuing brick work, steel work and and possibly roofing, but he said he’s not 100 percent sure about the roofing. Elementary Principal Joey Carr also told the board that the “Tradition Continues” with test scores in the Iowa and ACT results.

“We received the Iowa results and also the ACT results and we are pleased with those. There are areas for us to work on but the tradition continues. Our students and teachers did a really good job this last year and it shows in those results,” Carr said.

Barbaree added, “We are higher than the state average in every category and in every grade.”

In the high school update, Principal Theresa Lawrence and Technology Director Ross Harms informed the board of a new policy in the Technology Handbook that would allow students in grades 9-12 to be able to take home their MacBooks. They also said that students in grades 7-8 might be able to later in the year, after more study on the matter has been given.

— Open House will be held on Thursday, August 10.

— School starts back on Monday, August 14.

— Report to the Public meeting will be held on Monday, August 28.

— The board accepted the policy changes to the elementary, high school and technologies policy handbooks.

— The board approved the purchase of a new 3” water line and sewer, at a cost of $22,200 as well as bringing some electrical wires and lines up to code, for an additional $35,600.

— The Board also authorized Brittini Johnson and Jennifer Barbaree as signers for the Visa Credit Card.