Smyth County Schools' Teachers of the Year for 2010 are: front row, l-r, Sandra Parker, Rich Valley Elementary School; Tara Galliher, Saltville Elementary School; Tina Frazier, Marion Senior High School; NiCole Holmes, Northwood Middle School; Michele Atwood-Pendleton, Marion Primary School; Steffany Sheets, Chilhowie Middle School; and Tim Poston, Smyth Career & Technology Center. Back row, l-r, Tori Bledsoe, Chilhowie High School; Jennifer Sayers, Sugar Grove Combined School; Renee Roark, Marion Intermediate School; Stephanie Holmes, Northwood High School; Amy Rapoza, Atkins Elementary School; Ronnie Thompson, Marion Middle School; and Sam Cregger, Chilhowie Elementary School.
Smyth County Schools will dismiss students two hours early on Thursday, Sept. 2, due to high temperatures.
Advisory messages from the Smyth County School Board are now available through the free Nixle Community Information Service. By signing up for this service, you can receive school closing announcements, schedule changes, and other information related to Smyth County Public Schools. You can choose to receive messages by email, SMS text message, or the World Wide Web. There is no charge to join Nixle; however, you may have to pay to receive text messages, depending on the terms of your cell phone contract. To sign up, visit Nixle.com.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires schools to meet adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals each year in reading/language arts and mathematics. Schools that do not make AYP for two or more consecutive years in the same subject area are identified as being in School Improvement. Marion Intermediate School and Marion Primary School are both in School Improvement. This designation requires us to offer public school choice and supplemental educational services for the 2010-2011 school year. For more information on Marion Intermediate, please click here. For more information on Marion Primary, please click here.
In order to better serve our parents and community, Smyth County Schools Food Service Program has invested in a new web-based cafeteria application called Café Prepay. This application enables parents/guardians to view their child's lunch account status, including account balance, meals eaten, and à la carte/extra items purchased. Parents will also be able to make online payments. There is no charge to view a student account status; however, the company does charge $2.50 to process each online payment. To create an account, click the Café Prepay link under the Food Services menu at the top of the page. You will need your child’s six-digit cafeteria ID number to complete the account setup. New students will receive their cafeteria ID number at the time of registration or on the first day of school. With this system, all school cafeterias are linked together, which means that payments can be made at any school cafeteria in Smyth County. All schools are currently active except Sugar Grove Combined School, which will be incorporated into the new system pending the completion of network upgrades sometime after September 1st.
The Smyth County School Board has made the move to paperless meetings. The School Board has begun using a web-based application named BoardDocs to manage its meeting agenda and the numerous documents that board members review for each meeting. School board employees and other citizens can view the agenda and other publicly available documents for the upcoming meeting by clicking here or by selecting the BoardDocs link under the School Board menu above. The agenda for upcoming meetings is generally published on the morning of the meeting.
The BoardDocs paperless meeting application will provide increased transparency for meetings while savings reams of paper each year.
The WeAreTeachers organization is offering microgrants to teachers who submit projects on a variety of topics, including Response to Intervention, teaching technology, student research projects, and early childhood education. The microgrants are typically for $200 to implement your idea plus a digital video camera to document the results of your project. Teachers apply by posting a description of their project on the weareteachers.com website. Other teachers vote on the projects and the top five to ten vote-getters receive the grants. Details…