Hiatt Appointed as Interim Superintendent
Elementary and middle school principal Jeff Hiatt was appointed as interim superintendent of Allen Schools Monday at the regular school board meeting this past Monday evening, December 10th .
Hiatt will take over as interim superintendent December 20th .
Due to health reasons, retiring Superintendent Dr. Bill Caruthers will take a leave of absence. Caruthers announced in October he will retire after the end of the school year, effective June 30, 2019.
Caruthers recommended Hiatt for the interim job.
Allen School Board members discussed the matter in executive session and voted to appoint Hiatt after returning to the regular meeting.
The board also extended Hiatt the opportunity to stay on as interim superintendent for the next fi scal year.
Hiatt said he is looking forward to the challenge.
“I’m thankful for the board, giving me a chance,” Hiatt said. “It’s going to be a lot of work. That’s what we talked about (at the meeting), all the work that’s going to be involved, and how we’ve got to work together. I’m ready to get after it.”
Hiatt will continue to work as elementary and junior high school principal, he said.
Administrative
reports
* Hiatt *
In other business, Hiatt, Caruthers, and High School Principal Tony Wellington delivered administrative reports to the board.
Hiatt began by discussing field trips. He spoke of students in kindergarten through third grade going to watch a movie December 12th in McAlester instead of Ada.
“We had (a visit to the) pumpkin patch scheduled twice, and got rained out twice,” Hiatt said. “We had money donated by businesses (for the fi eld trip), so I didn’t want to take the money and not use it, so we’re going to a Christmas movie in McAlester. The reason we’re going to McAlester, I’ll just tell you, it’s $7 per kid compared to $10 in Ada. So I told everybody to call in and complain to them (the movie theater in Ada), they just won’t work with us.”
Hiatt discussed a middle school rewards trip coming next week.
“We pick things to reward kids for doing good,” Hiatt said. “I don’t have my list yet, I hope we have a big list. (A) bigger (list) means more kids have behaved. We’re going to Ada and go skating next week.”
Hiatt spoke about the OTISS Grant which the school received this year.
OTISS (Oklahoma Tiered Intervention System of Support) is Oklahoma’s intervention model for identifying and addressing academic and behavioral difficulties that might interfere with Pre-K-12 student success.
“My OTISS team met Friday,” Hiatt said. “We’ve got teachers going to training Thursday (today) and Friday. I can’t send everybody (at one time).”
Hiatt said the training involves learning the fundamentals of teaching reading.
“It’s not that they need it,” he said, “it’ll just be a foundation to build on. We’re kind of ahead of the game. It’s going to be mandated. At one point, every school is going to have to do this, so our teachers will hopefully be ahead of the game.”
Hiatt said also through the OTISS grant, teachers in kindergarten through third grade will visit Cottonwood School the mornings of January 9th and 10th .
“They’ve got some neat things going on down there, so we’ll get my teachers out looking at what other teachers are doing in other schools,” he said.
Hiatt said school faculty will be getting together soon to learn a new, proactive approach for dealing with at-risk kids.
“We’re doing that at the beginning of the year,” Hiatt said. “Basically, what that is is a little checklist that will come to me, and the counselor at that point will kind of identify behavioral problems, then the counselor can go in and work with those kids. We’ve never done this before, so this is new to me. But it makes sense; we can work on the front end fixing problems, instead of waiting until they’re already in trouble.”
* Wellington *
Wellington next addressed the board. He spoke of recent behavioral problems with some of the students.
“We’ve been dealing with all kinds of issues, some of which you are aware of,” Wellington said. “And, trust me, we take all of them seriously and deal with them head-on every day. We had another one today. We deal with it and get parents involved in it, and try and get kids help.”
One of the issues Wellington was referring to was a recent threat of violence by a student. The school system issued the following statement on its website.
“Allen Public Schools takes all rumors of threats seriously. Yesterday, 12-4-2018, a rumor was reported to the HS Administration and was investigated immediately. Allen Police were notifi ed and are investigating and working with the school to ensure student safety. The student involved is no longer in attendance at Allen Public Schools and will not return.”
Wellington also spoke of a proactive approach and said there are new programs becoming available which were created by psychologists and psychiatrists to teach school faculty and administration how to identify students with behavioral issues before they become a serious problem.
“We’ve got kids that have some problems,” Wellington said, “and have issues going on in their lives. And we’ve got to be able to spot some of that. Supposedly, some of these people are telling us they can teach us how to spot that early, so we’ll try to get ahead of the game.”
* Dr. Caruthers *
Caruthers said legal actions taken by some schools in Oklahoma have shed light on errors made by staffers in a state agency.
“It’s been going on for some time, but several schools in several counties got together and sued the (Oklahoma Tax Commission) over motor vehicle tag (issues). (some of the schools) in the suit didn’t get hardly anything, some got quite a bit. But, there are basically 221 winners and 169 or so losers, and we’re a loser. We’re going to lose $1,000 a month for the next 13 months.”
Caruthers said it won’t technically be a loss, because the school district was overpaid that amount on the past. He said it went back over the last several years and it was due to assessors at the OTC making mistakes.
“In our county, just for example, Stonewall is going to gain $23,000, Byng will gain $1,000 and Vanoss will gain about $9,000,” Caruthers said. “We’ll lose $13,000, Ada is going to lose fi ftysomething (thousand) and Latta will lose seventy-something (thousand). All in the same county.”
The money gained from tag sales goes into the school district’s general fund.
“The problem is, let’s say Jeff travels to Oklahoma City and buys his tag,” Caruthers said. “That money is supposed to track all the way back to this county. And apparently, it wasn’t happening. Sometimes it was.”
Caruthers mentioned the Allen cheerleaders and the big upcoming trip to the Citrus Bowl, which they raised money for.
“The Citrus Bowl, the cheerleaders, they are running into an issue,” Caruthers said. “They have the money, and everything is ready to go, and they want to rent a van. Well, (the rental agency) won’t take a debit card, they need a credit card. They want to know if they can use the school’s credit card to rent the van and pay the school a check (for reimbursement) on the spot.”
The request was added to new business and approved by the board.
* Construction update *
Ed McKerley of MacHill Construction was in attendance and provided an update concerning construction projects.
Voters in November 2017 approved $7.5 million in bonds to pay for constructing a new gym, renovating and adding classrooms to the junior high school and building new elementary-school classrooms.
“The gym is going fi ne,” McKerley said. “We’re at about 95 percent on the steel. The metal stud framing is almost about there, we’re at about 90 percent. We lack one staircase to put in, which is by the front door. But we’ve got to get some of the large machinery out of the building before we put that staircase in or we will not get them out.”
McKerley said they’ve called the Oklahoma City Inspection Board and the Fire Marshal for
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