Fort Frye BOE talks vaping, paving contracts
Trending
BEVERLY -- The Fort Frye Local School Board of Education discussed the district's school report card, heard about an anti vaping program, and approved a roof placement and district wide paving contracts at the monthly Board of Education meeting.
Superintendent Stephanie Starcher advised the board of the district's Ohio State Report Card rating. Fort Frye was rated 4 out of 5 stars.
"The district dives into that data and determines what went well and what could be improved," she said.
One of the factors in the rating is student attendance.
"We put a lot of emphasis on student attendance because it correlates with academic achievement. We had a 95.2% student attendance rate which is really good. It was the highest in a region of 15 schools that I studied," Starcher said.
Starcher added the high school graduation rate was 98.3%.
Megan Lang, district wellness coordinator, presented Catch My Breath, a vaping prevention and cessation program to the board. The district received a grant to train staff for the program.
"Catch My Breath is an evidence-based anti-vaping program. With the grant money, we paid for private training for our select staff."
The program is being introduced in grades 5-10. It includes a once a week class, held over four weeks.
Lang shared a fact from the program that stuck with her.
"One of the things the kids were learning was one cartridge can hold as much nicotine as a pack of cigarettes," she said. "I didn't realize how invested I was in taking this until we started talking about it."
The board also approved two contracts with VSWC Architects for summer 2024: a roof replacement for Beverly-Center Elementary School valued at $52,000 and a district wide paving project at $30,000.
"We're putting a new roof on this building. It's 25 years old, we've had several leaks, we've had multiple inspections of it and every single person has told us to replace it," she said.
The pavement projects at each school were scheduled for summer 2023, but pushed back due to construction.
"With so much construction going on and heavy equipment on the pavement, we did not want the pavement projects damaged this summer and have heavy equipment on our pavement," Starcher said.