FAIRMONT– Fairmont Area Schools held a work session for district employees on Tuesday.

Director of Building and Grounds Tyler Garrison was the first speaker at the meeting and provided an update on facilities projects across the summer.

The new vocational center is still on schedule to be operational at the start of the school year. Recently work has completed on the two garage doors attached to the wood shop. Some work still needs to be done on the center; the center is still awaiting delivery of boiler pumps and requires some minor adjustments to installed fixtures. Despite some supply shortages and delays in receiving materials the center is expected to be completed within its original budget.

While the center will be open at the start of the school year, some work will still need to be completed. Some small group tours may be held shortly before or after the start of the school year, but a formal ribbon cutting and open house wouldn’t be held until the center is fully completed. Kraus-Anderson, the company constructing the center, recommended such an event to be scheduled in October given the amount of work left to be completed.

Most other projects facilities staff have been working on during the summer are now either complete or approaching completion.

Following Garrison’s update high school co-principals Alex Schmidt and Chad Brusky discussed some of their focus areas going into the school year.

Student Opportunities for Academic Responsibility (SOAR) is returning this year following its absence last year due to COVID-19 restrictions. The 90-minute period will be for the last 90 minutes of each Wednesday and is split into three 30-minute sessions. These sessions can be used for interventions and enrichment activities lasting from 30 to 90 minutes. Some examples of possible activities include assemblies, community outreach, student workshops, and individual instruction.

Another item returning from previous years is flex spaces. These spaces would allow students who are performing well academically to use additional parts of the building during study hall. These spaces include rooms S212 and E114F, as well as the media center and the commons. Future spaces may include computer labs and room E240. Juniors and seniors can be eligible to use flex spaces at the start of the school year and sophomores will become eligible later in the year.

This year the high school is also introducing new software to facilitate and monitor some student activities.

EHallpass will be used when excusing students from class. The software tracks where, when, and why students are excused from class in a central database which can be accessed by staff members. The software also tracks how many students are in the hallways at a given time and can limit how many passes a student can receive or the number of students in the halls at any given time.

FlexScheduler is software that’s intended to simplify and centralize SOAR scheduling. It will allow students to sign up for select activities during SOAR and allow staff members to schedule interventions. The program will also prioritize academic interventions and prevent students from overriding or canceling appointments with staff members.

This year the high school will also be adopting a new cell phone policy. For grades 7 and 8 cellphone usage will not be allowed during the school day and phones will be required to be kept in lockers. For grades 9 through 12 phones will not be allowed in classrooms but will be permitted at lunch and in the commons for flex students.

Elementary co-principals Brian Grensteiner and Michelle Rosen presented an overview of some of their goals for the upcoming year. The pair planned to improve their implementation of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS); a set of more recent protocols and disciplinary practices aimed at improving student behaviors. Their second objective was to improve learning and grading practices so that they are more accurate, easier to understand, and better reflect student performance. They also planned to continue implementing SOAR time in the elementary school and improve their professional learning community.

Following Grensteiner and Rosen were Kim Niss, Principal of Curriculum, Instruction and Research, and Brooke Schultz, Director of Teaching and Learning. They discussed the district’s curricular process, assessment and grading practices, instructional framework, literacy programs, and operational frameworks before the meeting concluded.