SCSD #1 school board discusses 2023 budget

Tanya Baer, [email protected]

Rock Springs- On July 20, 2022, Sweetwater County School District 1 had a meeting to discuss the proposed budget for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023.

The Wyoming Believing in Literacy Together Discrtic Grant was discussed. “In September of 2020, Wyoming was awarded a federal grant of over $43 million dollars over 5 years,” said Jodie Garner. The grant timeline begins in August 2022 and lasts until September 2025. 15 percent of the funds have to go towards birth to age 5, 40 percent has to go towards kindergarten to grade 5, and the last 40 percent has to go towards grades 6 to 12. This grant aims to improve pre-literacy skills, reading, and writing, for Wyoming students from birth to grade 12. When figuring out how the goal could be achieved, the Literacy Leadership Team came up with several ideas that included: increasing the number of teachers who are able to teach literacy skills, preparing children before kindergarten, making sure students can read proficiently by the end of grades 3 and 5, giving graduates the literacy skills necessary for college and careers, and ensure that families have access to literacy programs.

The Mini Literacy Grant was applied for and awarded to the school district in the amount of $869,638. The grant ran from January 1, 2022, to July 2022, but this has been extended. With the grant, several things were done which included piloting the intervention materials, creating literacy mentoring, completing an EL program review, providing summer academies focused on Literacy and EL topics, and providing an opportunity for many teachers to go to the UW to work on an early literacy credential. A program called Reading Horizons has been created. This is supposed to fill in missing instructional gaps. There are two levels to the program including Reading Horizons Discovery for birth through grade 3, and Reading Horizons Elevate which is a reading intervention program for struggling readers in grade 4 through high school.

Bus routes were also discussed at the meeting. Some buses are currently at capacity so there will need to be discussions on what can be done to fix this issue. The implementation of the bus routing software has become slightly difficult but should get better as time goes on. Joe Clingenpeel stated, “There has been, and there will continue to be numerous amounts of information that has to be added to that program with all our students. It has to be kept up to date so there will always be changes within that system.” The routing program will look a lot like google maps. It will have pins for each destination. Currently, some of the pins are in unreachable places and this causes issues with the technology.

There will eventually be an app for Apple users that will allow parents to see updates about the bus. For example, if the bus is running late, and where it is located. This will help both parents and schools, and lessen the calls made to transportation with various questions. Android users will have to go to the website once it’s up and running to find this information. The schools will need the most accurate information to make sure this new technology runs smoothly. “Parents out there, please make sure that your contact information is accurate,” said Carol Jelaco. This app can also potentially allow parents to keep track of where their children get off of the bus.