Latest news with #GuilfordCountySchools
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Guilford County Schools explains funding challenge to serve exceptional children
GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — Guilford County Schools is grappling with an issue facing school districts nationwide. Educators want to know how they can best educate students with disabilities or learning challenges, who are also known as exceptional children. The number of students with disabilities or learning challenges has gone up in recent years, and the funding from the federal and state levels to provide legally mandated services has not. GCS is stretching itself thin to meet the needs of thousands of exceptional children. Exceptional children are those who have different educational needs than other students, whether it be in the form of a physical disability or one that isn't as apparent. Lindy Teachy works as an EC support lead for seven elementary schools with GCS. 'We definitely see a rise in our students who have mental health, social, emotional needs, behavioral needs. There's definitely been an increase in recent years in students who are presenting with those needs,' Teachy said. Exceptional children are given individual educational programs, or IEPs, which are legally binding documents with a plan for the student to achieve their educational goals with the support structure they need. A student granted an IEP must fall into one of 14 categories under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, including autism, ADHD and more. To give students the best tools to be able to learn and focus, teachers often get creative on their own. At Bessemer Elementary School, Mrs. Morehead's classroom contains a balancing desk, a rocking chair and other options to help students. She also provides tea and snacks out of her own pocket, and she brought the rocking chair from home. Making sure all students have an accessible education is no small feat. In addition to a monetary cost, it comes at an emotional cost as well. 'They are doing the work, meeting the needs. They are very tired,' Teachy said. The state provides funding for EC students that is capped at 13 percent of the student body and at about $5,300 per student. GCS has about 10,000 EC students, which is closer to 15 percent, according to district officials. 'Our state-level funding has pretty much remained the same,' said Kimberly Steinke, the chief exceptional children and student services officer at GCS. While most of the EC students have milder challenges, some have far greater needs that exceed $5,300 a year. One example is a child requiring a nurse. 'On average, the cost of a nurse per year per student is about $65,000,' Steinke said. They also need more teachers and volunteers. 'All of the resources and all of the technology and all of the curriculum in the world cannot replace a good teacher,' Teachy said. If you are interested in volunteering, visit the school district website to learn more. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Triad adapted PE specialist brings joy to student exercise
HIGH POINT, N.C. (WGHP) — Jason Novak loves every moment he gets to spend with his students. Whether it is at the Special Olympics games or in school, he is always encouraging them. Novak is a Guilford County Schools adapted physical education specialist. He thrives when his students thrive. One of his students, Tomas, was chosen as a Torch Bearer for the Spring Special Olympics games, and Novak could not have been more proud. About Tomas, he says, 'We have definitely built a connection. I really like seeing him be able to achieve things that you know a lot of people might look at him and say, oh, he can't do that, but it's my job to make sure that we adapt it in some way that he is still successful and it might, like I said earlier, it might look a little different, but he's still able to achieve the ultimate goal.' Throughout the school year, Mr. Novak's students look forward to his classes. They get excited when they see him because they know they are going to have some fun. 'You know, a lot of my kids struggle with sitting at a desk and you know, having that quiet time focused time that usually happens in a classroom,' Novak says. 'So we get to come in here and its organized chaos, to say the least, but they get to be up, and they get to be active. And so, you know, it's a different setting than what the majority of school is. So they, you know, get to have that fun in here, but we're also learning life skills for them to kind of take out into the community hopefully as they grow older.' He gets his ideas on how to adapt their exercises from many different sources, including a once-favorite television show. 'I grew up watching MacGyver, which is weird, but I kind of say like, you know, just kind of give me a couple pieces of equipment and I'll make it work. Some of the schools I go to are very blessed with the amount of equipment that they have, other schools, not so much. So we just kind of have to make do with what we have a lot of trial by error trial fire mostly cause they'll get upset if they're if they're not successful,' he says. When that happens, he will go back to work and try to figure out something new for his students to try. It's not always easy and definitely not predictable. But he says he loves it. 'I do. I my mom was a teacher for Guilford County schools for 25-30 years, and I knew a long time ago I wanted to be a teacher. I was not built for the classroom. I built to be active and move. And so, I became a PE teacher 18 years ago and did 12 years of Gen. Ed High School and then took a leap into adaptive PE. And that was about six years ago, and I will never turn back.' Novak teaches at 12 different schools across the county, so he spends a lot of his day traveling. But he says it's definitely worth it. 'Heck yeah, it is worth it all day, every day. You know, kind of getting that aha moment of when you see them finally me being able to like adapt something and then being able to see like an older siblings hit a baseball and they struggle hitting that moving ball, but yet we break it down on like a tee or we have it swing on a pendulum. So, the ball comes to the exact same spot every time and they make that contact, you know, and they get that feeling of like I've seen other people do this. And I know I can do it as well. So that's probably the best part!' He says, 'Every day is different. Every school is different. Every kid is different.' But one thing never changes. That's this PE Specialist's dedication to his students. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
County manager issues budget proposal
GUILFORD COUNTY — The Guilford County budget proposed by County Manager Michael Halford would keep the property tax rate at 73.05 cents per $100 valuation, a rate that has been consistent for the past several years and reflects a pledge by the board to not raise taxes. Halford was scheduled to present the proposed 2025-26 fiscal year budget during the Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting Thursday night. A copy of the proposal indicates that the general fund budget, the county's main operating fund, would total $841.68 million. In remarks through the budget proposal, Halford was candid in saying that his spending plan 'will not support' the budget sought by the Guilford County Board of Education for Guilford County Schools. 'I hear and understand that additional funding for the education systems in our county is needed,' Halford says. 'However, the full responsibility for addressing the funding deficits cannot rest on Guilford County, which already allocates nearly 60% of its flexible revenues to education.' Halford said that his proposed budget does extend to meet many needs of Guilford County Schools. The budget proposal recommends $464 million for Guilford County Schools, an increase of $32 million from the total allocation in the current fiscal year. The proposal includes an additional $2.5 million in operating support. Guilford County Schools would receive a capital outlay of $50 million in bond proceeds, an increase of $40 million, to address major system replacement needs. The budget proposal also allocates $53.2 million, an increase of $1.1 million, for debt service on the $2 billion in bonds approved by county voters in November 2020 and May 2022 to raise funds meant to transform school facilities. The formal budget process began this past November when department directors began indicating their needs to commissioners in work sessions. In April, the commissioners hosted three budget town halls at community locations to get public input. The sessions included one at Jamestown Elementary School for people in the greater High Point area. The commissioners will hold a public hearing on the budget proposal during their meeting at 5:30 p.m. June 5 at the Old Guilford County Courthouse at 301 W. Market St. in downtown Greensboro. The board should vote on the budget at its following meeting June 18 at the same time and location. The balanced budget should be in place by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Parents' bus requests carry big cost for schools
GUILFORD COUNTY – Guilford County Schools officials have not had much luck getting parents to stop signing up their children for school bus transportation that they have no intention of using, which is costing GCS millions of dollars. Faye Crowder-Phillips, the GCS executive director of transportation, told the Guilford County Board of Education in early 2024 that closing the large gap between the number of students assigned to buses and the number actually riding buses was one of her goals, but an update presented to the school board on Tuesday night showed almost no change in the numbers. In February 2024 Crowder-Phillips told the board that 29,159 students regularly rode school buses, but another 13,000 were assigned to buses at the requests of their parents even though they never rode. In Crowder-Phillips' presentation Tuesday night, she said there currently are 29,381 students riding buses, with more than 13,300 assigned but who never ride. That costs GCS money because it greatly contributes to reducing GCS's transportation system efficiency grade, which reduces how much of the system's expenses the state will reimburse. Crowder-Phillips said Tuesday that other changes that have been made over the past year, including use of a new bus route scheduling system, have increased the efficiency rating from 80% in the 2022-23 school year to 84.48% now. The state average is over 90%. Superintendent Whitney Oakley said that although more steps can improve that rating, including making more group bus stops instead of house-to-house stops, GCS probably can't hit 90% because it provides transportation to magnet programs for students who live in different attendance districts. Many school districts don't do that. In other business, the school board approved asking the Guilford County Board of Commissioners to approve an additional $50 million in bond funds to pay for HVAC and roofing projects at 11 school campuses, including these in High Point: Ferndale Middle HVAC work ($11.7 million), Johnson Street Global Studies roof replacement ($1.9 million) and Welborn Middle/Kearns Academy HVAC work ($6.1 million). The school board also received a long-expected GCS staff recommendation to close Southern Elementary School after Allen Jay Elementary in High Point and Sumner Elementary south of Greensboro are rebuilt. The Southern Elementary attendance district then would be divided between Allen Jay and Sumner. The board also heard complaints from five people about Summerfield Elementary School removing a children's book, 'And Tango Makes Three,' from the library after a complaint from the conservative group Moms for Liberty. The book is based on the true story of two male penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo who took in an orphaned baby penguin and raised it together. The book is often criticized by conservative groups as pushing a 'homosexual agenda.'
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
GTCC partnership provides work credential scholarships
GUILFORD COUNTY — Guilford Technical Community College and shift_ed have partnered to form a pilot program to help residents of a designated opportunity zone who graduated from Guilford County Schools in the past five years earn an in-demand work credential. The Career Accelerator program will provide scholarships to cover registration fees, books and testing fees. Priority will be given to students in specific high-need areas of the county based on census data. Certificate programs eligible for the scholarship include CompTIA (Computing Technology Industry Association) fundamentals, CompTIA network, introduction to HVAC/refrigeration, and certified production technician. The Career Accelerator program will begin during GTCC's summer session starting in May, with classes held on the GTCC Cameron and Greensboro campuses. Interested and qualified Guilford County Schools graduates should register for the program as soon as possible, no later than at least two business days prior to the start of class. For more information or to register for a class, to online to
