County School Board talks construction, evaluation

The Harlan County Schools Board of Education met on Thursday, June 28, discussing matters including a fieldhouse construction project and the performance of the district’s Superintendent.
Board Chairman Gary Farmer turned the floor over to Superintendent Brent Roark to update the board on construction currently underway in the district.
Roark brough the board up to speed on multiple change orders relating to the Harlan County Fieldhouse construction project.
“At this point on the fieldhouse, there are six change orders, which is incredibly low for a project of that magnitude,” Roark said. “Usually change orders involve paying for things that weren’t in the plan that got added as it went. If you look at the sum of all six of those change orders, it’s actually a credit of $7,765.82. There are some things we’ve taken out, they found some existing drains they didn’t know were there that allowed us to take out all that iron piping, then we took out some mirrors and some other little things.”
Roark explained any change in the project must be approved by the Board.
“At this point, I only know of one other change that’s not on this list, and it’s going to be for $1,500 for a dryer bin,” Roark said. “So, if everything holds, we’ll still come out approximately $6,000 on the positive side on change orders.”
The board passed a motion on Roark’s recommendation to approve the change orders.
The board also provided the Superintendent’s evaluation for the 2023 – 2024 school year.
Following an executive session, Farmer read the results of Roark’s evaluation.
“There are seven standards the superintendent is graded on,” Famer said.
Farmer explained those standards are strategic leadership, instructional leadership, cultural leadership, human resource leadership, managerial leadership, collaborative leadership, and influential leadership. The rankings are 1 – 4, with 4 being exemplary.
“Mr. Roark has been rated 4 (exemplary) by the board on every standard,” Farmer reported. “We also set our goals last year, and the goals for last year continued for this past school year.”
Farmer noted the goals were to continue financial stability, improve attendance rate and retention, continue completion of construction projects, continue the excellent working relationship with staff, students, parents and the Board of Education, maintain safety in all facilities in the highest level.
“In all categories, Mr. Roark scored exemplary,” Farmer said. “All goals were met.”
Farmer mentioned the goals for the next year have been determined.
“We keep raising the bar here,” Farmer said. “We’d like to continue to maintain financial stability, improve attendance rate and retention and we’d like to add to that to encourage the homeschool population to understand the benefit of in person instruction…continue the completion of construction projects…continue the excellent working relationship with staff, students, parents, and the Board of Education, and maintain safety in all facilities in the highest level…also, we want to explore the feasibility of preschool for the non KCEOC eligible population.”
Following some discussion, the meeting was adjourned with no further action.

The post County School Board talks construction, evaluation appeared first on Harlan Enterprise .