Middlesboro High School Band Director Suzanne Lee came to Tuesday’s School Board meeting to thank the board for purchasing new band uniforms and to ask for an additional chaperone to help on trips for the growing program.

The new uniforms the band is wearing this year are the first the program has had since 2002. With over 40 members, the high school band is the biggest it’s been since the mid 1990s.

“I just wanted to come and thank you all tremendously for the new uniforms,” Lee said. “It’s been wonderful and I think it’s helped — the program is growing.”

Superintendent Waylon Allen said one of the band students thanked him for the new uniforms at a recent game.

“I told him I didn’t buy them, the board did,” he said.

“We’ve got over 40 kids now and if there is any way to give me a little bit of help when I’m traveling with these kids it would be helpful. We may even have to take two buses at times and I can’t be on both buses,” Lee said. “I’m not talking about a certified music person, just someone who could be an official person that could help me. We go to parades, we’ve got a couple in October, we try to go to away games.”

Allen said Lee needed a chaperone for away trips and the school was looking into a way to pay that person.

Lee said she would be holding a 7th grade band night on Friday.

“You combine them with the eighth grade and the high school and we might have 70 kids out there,” she said. “Any help you can get me would be greatly appreciated.”

Board Chairman Teresa Brown said Allen would get with Finance Director Ava Wilder and MHS Principal Jesse Allen to figure out what could be done to add a band chaperone.
Middlesboro Elementary Principal Cindy Porter asked the board for an additional instructional assistant to help with a growing first grade class. Last year’s Kindergarten class had about 100 children and so far nine more have been added to this year’s first grade.
“We are asking for a teaching assistant for first grade to at least float around from room to room and help the teachers out,” Porter said. “Even when we’re out in our Jacket blocks they’re sitting at 17 or 18 students. Those are the homeroom numbers as of this morning.”

Board member Rian Johnson said has spent Tuesday morning at the Elementary School and could see that the first grade teachers needed the help.

Allen said that every Kindergarten class had a teaching assistant to help but that wasn’t the case for first grade. He added that a position didn’t have to be created because there were already aides working at the school.
“Our first grade teachers are doing phenomenal with what they’ve got,” she said. “We haven’t told them we would be asking for some help because we didn’t want to get their hopes up. But we don’t hear any complaining from them, the only thing I’ve been asked is for an extra table so they have a place to sit the children.”

Porter said the elementary now had over 500 total students.
“This is a great problem to have,” Brown said. “This is a good situation to be in.”
Brown said she was confident Allen and Wilder would come up with a creative solution to provide a first great teaching assistant.

In a separate matter, work is expected to begin next week to fix a drainage issue near the softball field behind Middlesboro Middle School.
“If you see some big equipment out there that’s what is going on,” Allen said. “We want to fix that drainage problem around that area. We’ve got the money to do that and I want to go ahead and get that done.”
During her report to the board, DDP Dr. Jamie Johnson said the district was down 10 students from the beginning of the year but enrollment was still up from last May.
“We’ve had some move out of the area and one from the elementary to sign out for home school since last week’s events,” she said. “The middle school had the same thing and we had one student go to homeschool from the high school.”

She added that the shooting on I-75 near London led to a sharp decline in attendance last week.

“Last week’s events impacted us pretty significantly, our attendance for the year is down to 87%. Monday it was all the way down to 60%, but we did improve as the week went on,” Johnson said. “Before last week our attendance was at 90% .The good thing is we can throw out five days at the end of the year and I project last week will be those five days.”
She said Monday’s attendance across the district was 92%.

In other business, the board:

— approved the 2024-25 working budget;

— approved a revised supplemental pay schedule with only change being the addition of stipend for BETA Club sponsors at the elementary and middle schools;

— put off committing to a partnership with Studer Education until more research is done. Brown asked Allen to reach out to other districts who have partnered with Studer to see if they feel it has been beneficial.

The next school board meeting will be Tuesday, October 22 at 5 p.m. at the Central Office. It is being pushed back one week because of Fall Break.