New school hours approved for 2010-11
The Illinois Valley Central District 321 school board heard a presentation from Mossville School students and faculty at its March 23 meeting.
Fourth-grade students at Mossville participated in NaNoWriMo, a novel-writing program that challenges authors to write a novel from start to finish in one month’s time.
“At first when we were told we were going to write a novel, we never thought we could do it,” said fourth- grade student Taylor Larson.
Larson wrote about a 10-year-old girl who was bullied and learned to stand up for herself.
Wendy Clary, principal for grades K-4, said many students surpassed their word number goals for the project.
Mossville seventh-and eighth-grade students and faculty spoke about the newly implemented class meeting, in which students meet each day before lunch for 20 minutes. There are three class meetings for both seventh and eighth graders.
Mossville principal for fifth through eighth graders, Brooke Geltmaker, said this is a “non-academic time of building well-rounded students.”
She said students use this time to develop teamwork, school spirit, social skills and collaboration.
Student Joe Gleason said his favorite part of class meeting was decorating his class door for fall and Halloween.
“Sometimes it was hard to get our team to work together,” he said. “But it was a nice challenge.”
Student Mike Myers said he liked being able to talk about issues during school hours.
“It’s nice to know that other people are listening to us and we can make things better by talking about it,” Myers said.
In other business, the board:
• heard about fire marshal inspections from Superintendent Dr. Nick Polyak, who said overall, the district received a good report.
“The fire marshal was complimentary of our buildings and the state they were in for the inspections,” Polyak said. He added that the few problems found, such as doors being propped open that should not be, are easy to fix.
• heard a construction update for South School.
“We are starting the finishing process,” Polyak said.
He said the gym floor has been poured, and painting and clean up have begun.
On April 13, the time scheduled for the school board’s meeting will be used for a tour of South.
• discussed school start and end times for the 2010-11 school year. The school day at IVC High School will be from 7:45 a.m. to 2:35 p.m., instead of 7:40 a.m. to 2:20 p.m.
