DSB To Rename HHS Track After Late Coach, Delays Voting On Firearm and Community Service Resolutions – Dresden School Board Update (06/12/2018)
Tuesday’s Dresden School Board meeting contained discussion of many important topics and important reports from school administrators. The meeting started with a thank you to the Byrne Foundation for assisting the school with funding for the Poland exchange program. The funding, which was provided by the aforementioned foundation, will allow some twenty students from Szamtuly (pronounced shamatewee) in Poland to visit Hanover and attend HHS for a week.
Next was consideration of a resolution about firearms on school property. The board is in the process of drafting a resolution to request that the governor allow local school boards to place restrictions on firearms. The draft also encourages action to curb gun violence on the state level; however, the draft is not finished and was quickly deferred to the August meeting.
The late start committee reported that they were in the process of talking with various groups about the impact of a later start time. The committee spoke to many groups in order to assess how a later start time would affect traffic and whether or not it was feasible for the company that operates our school busses. They plan to meet this summer in order to iron out the real and perceived costs of changing the start time and vowed to “put dollar figures to [the] costs [of implementing a later start time].”
The community service motion was briefly discussed, but due to a full agenda and the absence of an important member (who is recovering from knee surgery), the board did not take any decisive action. Questions arose over the position of the student body on the issue of community service (which to the best of my knowledge hadn’t changed since when it was passed). The board also questioned Council’s decision to pass a mandate that would not apply to itself (in the latest version the service requirement would start with an incoming freshman class, effectively exempting all current HHS students). Discussion will continue at the next meeting.
The board thanked the Byrne Foundation for their donation to the football program. Sources on the football team inform that the money was used to pay for tackling dummies, which have proved a very useful tool for the team.
The board then took up the matter of renaming the HHS track to honor the late coach Chris Brown. The board strongly supported the motion to rename the track; however, no clear plan for how the coach should be memorialized at the track was discussed. Many speculated about what sort of sign or plaque suited the track and would respectfully honor the former track coach, who unfortunately passed away in 2016.
