By Marcia Barnes
Staff Writer
Loud applause broke out after Head Coach Amy Shelton announced that the 2022-23 high school track and field records were broken by Lila Roberts, Ave Shook, Emma Shook and Marley Espinal.
“This made a big impact on our track record,” Shelton said.
Hayesville High School Principal Stacey Overlin followed with recognition for 11th grade athlete Taylor McClure who broke the 28-year-old shotput record that had been set by his dad, Chad McClure.
“That record didn’t last long though,” Overlin said. “Taylor broke his own record by a foot and a half. He has been named Asheville Times Ingles Athlete of the Week. You don’t see that a lot. He’s received several Division 1 football offers after high school, including all the service academies, Air Force, West Point and Navy.”
McClure received congratulations from Overlin and members of the board with a rousing applause for his achievements.
Recognition and high marks continued for Hayesville High School CTE students. Silas Brown highlighted recent activities of the Future Farmers of America.
“We have a great group of FFA students and more than 35 members now and a slate of officers.,” said Brown. “We’re very proud of them. We took them to the regional conference in Asheville where they sat through several leadership sessions. We’ll be going to our first trip to the regional rally in Waynesville this Thursday and they may be our first group that we’ll be taking to the state convention in Raleigh in January. That’s our plan.”
Revonda Palmer, Career and Technology Education director said there were several students in Michele Rhinehardt’s Foods 2 Class. receiving a Servsafe Manager Certification. They were Kyle Lunsford, Emily Grizzle, Alesia McClure, Alyssa Rodd, Emmaline Garza and Evin Fields.
Recognitions at the Monday night school board meeting moved on to outstanding Future Business Leaders of America. Bobbie Jones said, “This is a small sampling of those who are going to nationals. FBLA has been really active this year and for the first time ever since I’ve been here, we went to regionals and took 11 students and took a medal. We had 12 people compete at state, three bids for nationals. Jones recognized Jacob Christiansen who placed Top 10 Public Speaking; Nathan Plemmons, Top 10 Mr. Future Business Leader; Mary Nicholson, third place word processing; and Lauren Gottlieb, first place job interview. Jones said that Fabio Nava who placed third in spreadsheet design and was not able to be present on Monday evening will be going to nationals. Gottlieb and Nicholson will also be attending the national competition. FBLA Nationals will be in Atlanta, Ga., June 27 through June 30. Jones said that she and Will Penland were extremely grateful for the support which they and the students have received from the community and making it possible to go to the nationals.”
Spring 2023 Internship students gave brief recounts of the experience received at local businesses. Dallyn Rhea interned at Clay County Chamber of Commerce; Emma Shook, Carolina Therapy Services; Jasmine Green, Townson-Rose Funeral Home; and Jacob Christiansen, S & N Communications. Future CTE growth has received help from a Dogwood Grant for $1,000,000 to create a new Early Childhood Development Pathway at Hayesville High School for the next five years. Superintendent Dale Cole said, “Dogwood Health Trust offered this grant opportunity all across Western North Carolina and the communities they serve. There are a lot of miles between the different day care offerings and parents struggle with finding quality day care for their children so they can go to work. “One of the big problems is that there aren’t enough licensed workers to work at day cares. So when we saw this, we were looking for a way to expand CTE opportunities at the high school. “We worked into this grant an availability to create a summer program for at least half of our Pre-K students to be able to have summer day care all day long in the summer with a licensed teacher and an assistant, and to be able to pay out of this grant. Also, we’ll have after-school day care for those same Pre-K kids during the school year for five years.
“On a related note, it allows any student we have enrolled in early childhood education to have a ready-made internship opportunity on the campus both during the summer and after school and during the school day at the day care we offer at the primary school with our partnership with Southwestern.“It covered a lot of different things and we were very excited about getting $1,000,000 over the next five years to provide this,” Cole said.
Reporting to the board on the Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America at a local level, Hayesville High School senior Lyndsey Evans spoke about a group of teens that meet once a month to talk about ways to prevent drug use in the county and to figure out how to make that a conversation in the schools. Evans is a part of the Hayesville Team Advisory Board and said that in January 2023, she was blessed to be able to go to the capitol in Washington, D.C. “We got to attend seminars in leadership, how to make presentations and how to really reach your audience. I was overwhelmed before I went, but then realized I can make a change. If I can help one person to make the right choice, it’s worth it,” Evans said. Evans shared the experience of the three-day conference on Capitol Hill, going to the Senate building and meeting state representatives and thanking them. Evans trip was sponsored by Mountain Projects of Hayesville.
Action items approved during the April 24, 2023 meeting were:
• Approval of contract with Woodard Electric to install air conditioning in the Hayesville Middle School gym for $78,640.00.
• Approval of contract with Trinity Painting in Cleveland, Ga., to repaint the interior of Hayesville Elementary School for $53,325.00.
• Approval of contract with Carl Patterson Flooring to install new LVP flooring at Hayesville High School in all classrooms and hallways, excluding the gym lobby, band room and media center, for $256,087.52.