At Monday night's Whitewater School Board meeting, four teachers were recognized as Herb Kohl Teacher Fellowship Nominees: Elementary Teacher Sara Sixel, Middle Teacher Stacey Joseph, High School Teacher Greg Stewart, and Special Services' Whitney Updike were given the nominations for 2022. After that, a local family donated a new wrestling mat to the high school. The donation is $4922.66. The mat would have a Whitewater High School logo in the center, and the Whitewater Wrestling logos on the corners of the side. The Board approved the donation.
The board then discussed the possibility of a Family and Consumer Science course. This course will allow students to learn important skills, as well as technical education. These classes would be offered in middle school, and is considered important for these students to keep pace with real world technology. There is a fully functional room of equipment ready to go. The FACE program inherited the home economics classroom in 1994, and it was a popular course. The Tech Education classroom would be in the room currently used as a storage room for teachers during the pandemic. Several kits, including a CO2 Race Car kit have been kept, while others have been added. There has been $20,000 of ESSER money set aside for Middle School Technical Education, and as mentioned the fully functional rooms also have fully functional appliances. The teaching position for Digital Life Skills is listed as a one year Language Teacher Education course. There is discussion to move the Digital Life Skills courses to the younger grades to allow more one for one utilization.
6th graders would take the Digital Life Skills course, while 7th and 8th graders Family Consumer Science or Technical Education. At the high school level, 9th graders would see an adjusted curriculum to focus more on ACT prep, and there would be a realignment of Tech Ed classes to adjust to more lower grade level advancement.
The board was given two recommended options, shift the Digital Life Skills course to FCS, or shift it to Technology Education.
There would be just one additional hire in the role. Some board members wondered if there was enough information to make a decision at the meeting, A motion was made to implement the course for 2022-2023 and reconsider FACE for the 2023-2024 school year. The motion was passed.
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