District 2 recognizes students, plans for upcoming year

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During its monthly meeting at the school district office, the board members of Clarendon County School District Two celebrated students’ academic success and discussed opportunities for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) integration within the district’s schools. The meeting began with a brief introduction from John Tindal, the superintendent of Clarendon county school district two, and he discussed several academic accomplishments of Manning’s students. Before the board held its usual discussion, Tindal honored several students who displayed academic prowess in spelling bee and academic challenge competitions. Students and parents were invited to this portion of the meeting, and each student recognized was asked to receive an award and take several photos. The awards were given to Manning Elementary School (MES) and Manning Junior High School students who competed in and placed in this year’s regional spelling bee competition and in the Academic Challenge Team competitions. According to Tindal, he and the other board members were delighted to have such strong regional competitors and were proud of the students’ performance. “We’ve always had students excel academically, but this year, we saw many of our students show off their talents on a larger scale,” Tindal said. “We’re all very proud of that, and they have represented the school district and their schools extremely well.” After recognizing the students and praising their accomplishments, Tindal dismissed the students, parents and other attendees so that the board could discuss several legal matters in private. After the board’s executive meeting, attendees were invited to hear several policy discussions. One of the most important topics on the agenda was the approval of the 2018-2019 district calendar. According to Tindal, the calendar was drafted several different times before it was approved by the majority of the schools’ faculty. However, according to Arthur Moyd, the calendar could be subject to change. A new bill was recently proposed that would allow for students’ to return to school one week earlier after summer break, so if this bill is passed, the board plans to reassess the calendar. After discussing financial reviews and approving space requests, two teachers from the district, Marian Marlowe and Johni McElveen, gave a presentation about a new program and teaching style to help Manning’s teachers give their students a well-rounded education. According to Marlowe and McElveen, teachers at MES have been implementing a new approach to teaching based on the skills promoted by Project Lead the Way (PLW), a national organization that encourages teachers to construct engaging learning environments. Marlowe and McElveen said that approximately one-third of the faculty at MES has already undergone training for the program or has volunteered to be a part of the next training session. According to McElveen, the new teaching approach seeks to incorporate more STEM classes and activities into their curriculum. Several teachers within the district have already displayed the PLW ideals, and their students have already seen positive results. Throughout their presentation, Marlowe and McElveen showed several different charts and sets of data that displayed the program’s results, and in almost every set of data, the students introduced to the new teaching style outscored the students who hadn’t by a wide margin and had surpassed several benchmark assessment scores. After their presentation, the board discussed the increased number of homeschooled students for the district before entering another private executive session to discuss employee reports. Before the meeting was adjourned, the board opened the discussion to the public once more to discuss some final issues concerning legal matters and recommendations for employee issues. When these discussions closed, Tindal made final comments concerning the board’s upcoming activities and reminded the attendees that, although these meetings are partially private, community members are welcome to attend and participate.