School Board Hears West Jessamine Construction Update at New Superintendent’s First Meeting

Jessamine County Schools Superintendent Sara Crum attended her first superintendent meeting at the Monday Board of Education meeting.

The first part of the meeting is always the Superintendent’s Report.

The meeting began with a design update for the West Jessamine Middle School renovation by Tate Hill Jacobs Architects in Lexington. Katrina from Tate Hill was present to provide the updates. Katrina presented design documents to the Board and the audience, modeling the design of the new middle school to be constructed near Brannon Crossing. The design includes a more centralized entrance and administration, multi-use collaborative spaces outside of classrooms, and a view of the sports fields from the front of the school instead of the fields being hidden away in the school’s backyard as they usually are. Katrina said the architects will continue working on the design through February 2025, and construction on West Jessamine Middle School will start next summer. She expects construction to last two to two and a half years.

This project is meant to serve the middle school for 30 years to come and will increase the number of students the school can serve from 850 to about 1,000. Board Chair Steven Scrivner pointed out that this seems to be a small increase considering the county’s quick growth. Katrina responded that if the Board gives Tate Hill a new number, they can work on making the school big enough for more students, but there isn’t a whole lot of extra space on school property to work with.

The Board approved the schematic design for the West Jessamine Middle School renovation project, but it can still request changes to the design plans in the future.

The West Jessamine High School Girls Basketball Team was also recognized in this meeting after finishing their season with a 26-9 record. These ladies also won their first two regional games and currently rank 12th in the state pre-season polls.

All the coaches, including the team members, were in attendance. Head Coach Matt Hilkens said:

“We challenge them extremely hard… we’ve changed everything from our practice habits to lifting weights consistently and trying to teach the girls how to eat properly. It’s not hard to brag about the girls that I have cause they’re willing to listen and put their best effort forward. We went to the district as the number one seed. We won on a buzzer-beater against a Pulaski team that had previously beaten us. We have high expectations for next year. We expect to compete for regionals this year,” Hilkens said.

Lastly, in the Superintendent’s Report, Crum announced that the county’s high schools comply with Title IX, as found in its yearly Title IX audit reports. There are a few criteria for compliance with Title IX, like whether the schools have new programs coming in and the ratio of boys and girls in sports. Every year, the schools have to meet one of these criteria to comply with Title IX, but the schools don’t have to meet the same criteria every year.

The Jessamine County School Board must approve the Kentucky School Board Association’s Annual Policy Updates every year. This meeting, the board gave the policy updates a first reading.

“There are a lot of policy changes. Some of them come from the state, some are language changes, and some are brand new. We also have district suggestions that our district department sees as needing to change,” Crum said. She continued, listing some of these changes. They include a new policy requiring the district to post its Kentucky Summative Assessment (KSA) results on a banner on the front page of its website. There are also changes in safety, requiring the district to publish digital maps of the school and changes to board member qualifications and vacancies. Chair Steven Scrivner suggested posting the entire document of changes online for the public to see. In this meeting, the policy changes were first read. Once this item receives a second reading in August’s school board meeting, these changes will be posted online.

Lastly, in this meeting, the board approved bid results and plans for tennis court renovation (including new lights, netting, fencing, and more), and band tower construction at West and East Jessamine High Schools. Superintendent Sara Crum was also elected as the Secretary for the Jessamine County School District Finance Corporation and the Jessamine County Board of Education Secretary.

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