Rock Hill Schools March Work Session Notes

Mount Holly Elementary School, Rock Hill's newest elementary school, was the setting for the March work session of the District Trustees. Kim Ham, Art Teacher at the school, had a group of first graders show puppets they had made and to give a story about each one. Then She, and Principal Chris Beard Presented puppets of all the Board members and Superintendent Lynn Moody. The Puppet below is one of the school board members.

In other business, Dr. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey made a presentation asking for district participation in a project to restore the Liberty Hill Rosenwald School and to build a Catawba Community Center. The District is being asked to provide the land, either with a long term lease or sale. The school is located near the Chester County line.

Impact Church has requested an extension of their use of Rawlinson Road Middle School until June of 2010 so they will have more time to find a permanent home. The granting of this will come with an additional $1,000 per month fee.

The YMCA has requested the use of the Flexible Learning Center Gym for summer camp as they have done in previous years.

Dr. Kokolis gave some statistics on current balance in our elementary schools and reviewed the procedures that have been used with the most recent balancing efforts. The administration was asked to bring forward a policy that would set a time table for reviewing, and taking action, on the district balance. Some statistics:

Schools with more than 70% Free and Reduced Lunch (F&R); Northside. Schools with more than 60% F&R but less than 70%; Belleview; Ebenezer; Independence; Oakdale; Sunset Park. Schools with more than 50% F&R but less than 60% F&R; Ebinport; Finley Road; Richmond Drive; Rosewood. Schools with more than 40% F&R but less than 50% F&R; Lesslie; Mount Gallant; York Road; India Hook; Mount Holly. Schools with less than 40% F&R; Old Pointe; Sylvia Circle. Roughly 45% of our students qualify for F&R this year. The economic downturn is being felt, there have been 291 applications for F&R since January of this year.

Bill Mabry gave a projection on revenue's for the 2009-10 school year. It appears revenue will be $1.5 million below this years projections and about $4 million dollars less than this years budgeted expenditures. No word on what the expense budget target will be.

Ann Reid gave an update on the State School Board Convention held in February. Ann gave a presentation and reported the convention was well attended. Rock Hill Board members choose not to attend because of current economic conditions. Ann made a request the meeting be moved to Columbia (a more central location to save on cost) which apparently went of deaf ears.