ASHEBORO – The Randolph County School System has found itself with a bit of extra funding.
At its Oct. 21 meeting, the RCSS Board of Education approved the acceptance of two grants.
The first was a $50,000 Career and Technical Education Grade Expansion grant from the Education and Workforce Innovation Commission.
The grant will provide partial funding to support a middle school career development coordinator whose job is to ensure students have a documented career development plan and will support staff with facilitation of each student’s plan.
The second grant is a $60,000 Innovation Grant from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to provide funding to support the North Carolina Jobs for America’s Graduates program at Providence Grove High School.
“I hope people pick up on some of the things (director of instructional support services Larry Chappell) and your staff are doing for these students because it is exciting and it affects so many kids,” said board chair Gary Cook. “Those programs really help to make school exciting.”
The board also was presented with three additional grants which the district had received including a $1,000 Run 5 Feed 5 grant to provide funding to Northeastern Randolph Middle School for the backpack program to address childhood hunger, a $419 Donors Choose grant to provide 40 lab coats for the Randleman Middle School fifth grade science classes and a $669 Duke Energy Science Night grant for Tabernacle Elementary School to provide a kit with hands-on science activities for the STEM Title I parent night.
The board was presented with contracts which had been approved by the superintendent in October, one of which was a technology refresh for chromebooks totaling $1.211 million.
“It would be wrong to not talk about what’s been going on for years here between our Technology and Finance departments,” superintendent Stephen Gainey said. “There have been so many bulk orders with chromebooks and it’s kept the value of the cost individually down for the school system and that’s thanks to tremendous planning between both groups and the timing. I’d be wrong not to point that out because that’s how you maximize the dollars you have.”
Additional contracts included the acquisition of gasoline and diesel fuel, repair parts and services and a subscription to the Destiny Educator Platform software.
The Follett Software site, which is the parent company for the platform, states: “The Destiny Educator Platform offers suites uniquely tailored to every department and connects educators across roles. With a single, intuitive interface that spans the platform, onboarding and training your entire staff is simple. And with unified dashboards, educators can make decisions informed by insights that encompass the whole district, from every school to every student.”
Finally, the board approved the preliminary school performance plans for the 15 schools designated as low-performing by the state accountability grades.
Those sites include: Eastern Randolph High School, Level Cross Elementary School, Northeastern Randolph Middle School, Randleman High School, Randleman Middle School, Southeastern Randolph Middle School, Southwestern Randolph High School, Southwestern Randolph Middle School, Trinity Middle School, Uwharrie Ridge Six-Twelve, and Wheatmore Middle School.
The plans will be available for viewing on the district’s website and the public will have 30 days to provide input before the final plans are submitted for approval by the board.
The board of education will next meet Nov. 18.
