FAIRMONT — The Fairmont Area School Board heard updates Tuesday from high school co-principals Jake Tietje and Alex Schmidt via a virtual session.

Tietje offered information on how things are running at the high school, noting that a survey will be going out next week to further gauge concerns and gather feedback from families and teachers, given the ongoing distance-learning situation.

“We’ve had more and more parents share great success stories with their students, complimenting our teachers for the work that they’ve done,” he said. “Some of the feedback from parents is that it was a little bit overwhelming at first, but our teachers took it seriously and I think that really shows the work our teachers have put into this.

“We’ve guided our teachers to have 20 to 30 minutes of learning that happens each day. We had some students’ feedback that they were spending 10 hours working on this work at home, and we had to take a step back and reflect on that.”

“I was talking with a staff member last week,” Schmidt said. “One comment that she made was that it’s hard to keep those connections with your students on a personal level like you do in the hallways and the classrooms. But they’re doing so many things to make sure those connections still exist.”

Turning to another matter, Superintendent Joe Brown offered an update concerning a pending contract for a school resource officer.

“I’ve been sharing emails between myself and [Fairmont Police Chief] Mike Hunter,” he said. “Originally they gave us a copy of the contract they have at Arise Academy [in Fairmont]. When I costed that out, it looked like they were going to charge us a 50 percent increase.

“So I got ahold of Mike and said there were two things we really wanted. Number one, we wanted to make sure that this SRO is available at the high school from 7:30 in the morning to 3:30 p.m. Even though that’s different from the police contract they have with the city, Chief Hunter said that would be fine.

“Second of all, I proposed a 5 percent increase each year rather than a 50 percent increase all at once. Chief Hunter countered that a little bit, but I thought it was reasonable. We can use the safe school levy money to pay for the SRO. I think everybody agrees we still want to keep a school resource officer, and if you notice those emails, the city police department does appreciate the close collaboration they have with both of our buildings and they want to maintain that.”

Receiving approval from the board to finalize the contract, Brown will submit it to the board for ratification on April 28.