Frontier Local Schools Superintendent Beth Brown, right, speaks during Thursday’s board of education meeting in the Frontier High/Middle School Media Center as, from left, board members Joanie Reese and Adam Snyder and Treasurer Lee Howard listen. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

NEW MATAMORAS — Frontier Local Schools used some of its federal COVID-19 assistance to conduct after-school intervention sessions to help prepare students for recent state testing.

Paying teachers who worked the five-day program and bus drivers who transported students at their normal rate for the additional time was one of nine items on the superintendent’s report portion of Thursday’s Frontier Local Board of Education meeting.

The items passed on a 2-1 vote with board President Jarod Kiggins and member Jennifer Ramsey absent. Vice President Adam Snyder voted against the measure, but declined to specify which item he took issue with when board member Joanie Reese asked if he wanted to pull a specific one out.

Superintendent Beth Brown said one of the targets of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding was to help students who may have fallen behind catch up in certain areas. The two-hour after-school sessions, which included a snack for students, were a “trial run” for more such efforts next year, she said.

“Maybe it’s at the end of each nine weeks,” Brown said.

Brown, who is also the principal at Frontier High/Middle School, said participation grew as the program went along.

“We started out with, I don’t know, 10, and then the next day they had 30,” she said.

Matamoras and Newport Elementary Principal Tiffany Rife said she saw a similar trend, noting some parents might not have gotten paperwork about the sessions from their children but sent them after they found out.

The board also approved the use of ESSER funds to replace 54 Chromebooks and 12 charging carts. Brown said the district has a 1-to-1 device-student ratio and some of the laptops were five years old.

That expenditure was among the items approved from the treasurer’s report, along with a combined $7,625.75 to remove and replace wall pads at the high/middle school gym. Another was an amendment to last month’s approved expenditure for new cameras at the schools to reflect the total of $148,646.22 with some additional devices purchased, Treasurer Lee Howard said.

Rife told the board that kindergarten registration will be on May 4 and so far they expect 26 new students at Newport Elementary and 20 at Matamoras.

“Those are big classes. That’s great,” Reese said.

That compares to a combined class of 33 sixth-graders that will tour the middle/high school next week in preparation for entering seventh grade next year, Brown said.

The meeting opened with a nearly 90-minute executive session to discuss personnel and other issues. No action was taken when the board and administrators returned to the Media Center.