The Fulton School Board heard a number of reports during Wednesday night's regular meeting on topics ranging from attendance to the Fiscal Year 2016 budget.
First up, teacher Shannon Forbis gave the board an update on the Fulton Education Center's new preschool program, which started Dec. 1.
Forbis said she has 13 students in her morning session and 12 in her afternoon program - enough that she now has a full-time aid to assist her. She said the goal is to get both sessions up to capacity at 15 students.
Forbis said the goal for the preschool program is to prepare children for kindergarten. She said the FEC Preschool accomplishes that by utilizing a Project Construct curriculum, which Forbis described as "constructive play time."
She said the preschool recently passed its licensing inspection and that they hope to have the program fully licensed by the start of next year.
Superintendent Jacque Cowherd also made a comment about the program, related to the fact that parents must pay an enrollment fee based on a sliding scale.
"We have several staff members that are sponsoring kids," Cowherd said. "I think that's a testament to how important this (program) is."
He said the district is moving toward a goal of eventually having a publicly funded preschool program.
Also during Wednesday night's meeting, Larry Flakne with the Missouri Network for Educational Improvement (MNEI) spoke to the board about the initiative, which has begun working with the Fulton district.
Flakne said MNEI is a statewide project operating through the University of Missouri's School of Education as part of its outreach program.
He said the goal is to "go out and support schools and school districts around the state and try to bring best practices and good processes for improvement."
Flakne said MNEI does a comprehensive needs analysis to help determine a plan for the "overall planning and improvement and bringing process thought to schools."
Cowherd said MNEI has already been at the middle school and will be conducting faculty surveys at all of the district buildings. He emphasized that the program is not replacing anything the district is already doing through the Professional Learning Communities system.
"We're meant to work at the organizational level to see if we can make things more efficient," Flakne said. "It gives you much more time to do the important things, and that's dealing with the kids."
In other business, Assistant Superintendent Suzanne Hull said a recent test of the state's new standardized testing system revealed some problems: Namely that it is not compatible with the chromebooks used by Fulton and a number of other districts statewide.
"The software company is working on the problem," Hull said, noting it is fortunate the issues were discovered in February and not April.
Cowherd noted the glitches are especially frustrating because "we did our homework."
"When we decided on the probooks ... DESE assured us this would work," he said.
Later in the meeting, Cowherd gave a brief preview to development of the Fiscal Year 2016 budget. The presentation included year-end projections for 2015 that include a net surplus of $274,325 depending on special education funding.
Cowherd said expenses for FY 2016 will include continuation of current district programs and the health insurance program, the addition of an instrumental music instructor, the addition of a full-time position at McIntire Elementary to accommodate an additional section of kindergarten and the addition of two full-time math teachers at the middle school. Wish-list items included operation of the salary schedules, a base compensation increase for all salary schedules and providing transportation for all walkers.
Also during Wednesday night's meeting:
•Cowherd gave a report on attendance, which currently is at 94.86 percent district wide. He noted that none of the district's buildings currently meet the state standard of 90 percent of students attending 90 percent of the time. "We've been hit hard with illness all year," Cowherd said in explanation of the attendance numbers.
•Fulton Middle School staff gave its monthly report on efforts to improve student comprehension and performance in the areas of science, math and English/language arts - all of which are making progress toward goals to improve to at least 60 percent of students scoring proficient or advanced in those subject areas.
•Board member Kevin Habjan announced there will be a School Board Candidate Forum at 6 p.m. March 19 in the high school commons area.