The president of the Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School Board is asking for a meeting with city and county officials before the upcoming school year to discuss safety.
After a week that included six homicides in Leflore County, Samantha Milton spoke Tuesday to the board and Dr. Mary Brown, the district superintendent, about preparing for students’ return to classes in August.
During the brief conversation, which took place after the board approved submission of a school violence prevention grant proposal, Milton asked Brown to provide a detailed safety plan for the board before students return in three months.
Brown said she would and added that while the district does have some school safety officers, she would like to hire more.
“We would like more officers, but we have to see if we have it in the budget as well,” she said. “But we definitely could use more officers.”
Also Tuesday, the board approved several beneficial grants and programs for the district.
One of the items included a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) access program. This is a federally and privately funded program that helps implement more advanced technical courses for schools.
Dr. Kenneth Pulley, deputy superintendent, said the program “provides promising high school students from rural Mississippi access to advanced STEM courses they need to achieve their full potential.”
The board also approved a K-2 reading initiative grant award, which is designed to catch a lapse in phonics learning at an early age. The district was awarded a summer-school class license for these early grades at a value of $14,400.
In other business:
- The board approved two donations — face masks given by Freddie White-Johnson and several pieces of office equipment, including desks, chairs and filing cabinets, given by Republic Finance.
- The board went into two closed executive sessions, one before the meeting and one during it. Both involved personnel issues, according to Board Attorney Kelvin Pulley. These were not related to several closed-door meetings about personnel that took place in May.
Pulley also said no action was taken during the first meeting, but the board was still in the second session by the press deadline Tuesday night.
- During the superintendent’s report, Brown said that there were no reported cases of COVID-19 in the district.
Since March, the district has employed a hybrid learning schedule that combined in-person and distance learning, although only around 500 of the district’s more than 4,000 students chose this path. Others stuck with distance learning only.
- Contact Adam Bakst at 581-7233 or abakst@gwcommonwealth.com. On Twitter at @AdamBakst_GWCW.
