During their work session meeting on Monday evening, the Board of Education voted for the Kentucky Association of School Administrators to conduct the district’s superintendent search. KASA Director Program Development Owens Saylor will be leading the search, said Interim Superintendent Elmer Thomas.

Thomas said the job opening “will be posted very soon with anticipated closing date in February or early March.”

The board also discussed enrollment and Kentucky Summative Assessment scores, with a data report from Assistant Superintendent Sheri Satterly and Data Coordinator Donda Kikendall. Highlights included high participation rates in testing and an uptick in enrollment in the district.

“Our participation rates on the KSA during the 20-21 school year were right around or well above state average participation rates, especially at the elementary and middle school levels,” Satterly said. “This, to me, shows that we have staff, students, and families who take extreme pride in our schools and our district. In most cases, we obtained over a 95% participation rate on the KSA, which is the minimum requirement in most assessment years. That requirement was waived during the 20-21 school year, and we were still able to make our best effort to get our students in the door to test, giving us another data point to use to see where our students are and to make instructional decisions for those students.”

On enrollment data, Satterly said, “Our student enrollment took a slight dip during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are very pleased to be seeing our enrollment start to trend back up during the 21-22 school year. Our overall enrollment was up 11 students in September from last spring, and is currently up another 11 students from the start of the school year.

Also, over the last three school years, we have gained more students than we have lost to neighboring school districts, including several surrounding counties.”

For example, over the last three years at the district’s four main schools, there have been 49 students enrolled from Boyle County Schools, and the district has only had 34 withdraw to Boyle County.

About the enrollment data, Board Member Wade Stanfield said, “This is really good” because more enrollment means more finances and resources provided to the district from the state.