Nabors retires as middle school principal; MG board examines school safety issues

By Tay­lor Kaser

The retire­ment of Mid­dle School Prin­ci­pal Rick Nabors was approved by the board at their reg­u­lar Jan­u­ary meeting.

After serv­ing as the school’s prin­ci­pal for five years, the board “regret­fully” approved the motion to accept his retire­ment at the end of this school year.

“I don’t want to do this.” Board mem­ber Vir­gil Sta­ley said of the motions pass­ing, a sen­ti­ment that was car­ried by the entire board. Pres­i­dent Jeff Sweeney thanked Nabors for his work and achieve­ments as prin­ci­pal. (See arti­cle on page 3.)

Safety within the school was also heav­ily con­sid­ered. “We need to make sure we’re doing every­thing we can,” empha­sized Sweeney, “but it’s never enough.” He noted that many schools in the past have believed that their safety arrange­ments were enough, but Sweeney noted that it can always be improved upon.

Super­in­ten­dent Jeff Thomp­son explained that he’s recently met with school admin­is­tra­tors to review the school’s safety plans and each build­ings security.

“As a dis­trict we’re being very proac­tive in try­ing to improve,” said Thomp­son, ”you can never be pre­pared enough. We’re con­stantly review­ing and look­ing at the plans we have in place.”

Part of the dis­tricts proac­tive mea­sures in tight­en­ing up on secu­rity is mak­ing sure that entrances to schools are well mon­i­tored, includ­ing the area sur­round­ing the schools, and keep­ing entrances secured.

Com­mu­nity sup­port and help are also key, explained Thomp­son. If some­one knows or hears about some­thing, it is imper­a­tive that they report it, he said. Being vig­i­lant as a dis­trict and a com­mu­nity are impor­tant factors.

With the goal of always try­ing to improve safety, the dis­trict plans on con­sult­ing an out­side secu­rity firm as well.

The district’s prin­ci­pals have already done a lot in the way of plan­ning and prepar­ing for emer­gency sit­u­a­tions, said Thomp­son. The schools have prac­ticed lock downs and have also con­sulted local law author­i­ties on ways to improve and prepare.

Safety is cer­tainly not some­thing that the dis­trict is tak­ing lightly, and they are actively pur­su­ing numer­ous avenues to improve the safety and pre­pared­ness in each school.

Also approved at the meet­ing was a five year con­tract with Slam Dunk, LLC for the pur­pose of acquir­ing a new score­board for the foot­ball field.

Slam Dunk will assume the respon­si­bil­ity of sell­ing adver­tis­ing on the bot­tom sec­tion of the board to pay for the new dak­tronic board. The board, which will include a play clock, is esti­mated to cost around $45,000.

Sweeney noted that some other sur­round­ing schools have suc­cess­fully employed this method to attain a new board, and that the boards are of good qual­ity. By them­selves, the dis­trict can­not afford to replace the board and because of its age, repair­ing the board is also out the ques­tion. He noted that this is the district’s best chance of replac­ing the board.

The board also approved Cheryl Hagerty to serve on the Tomor­row Center’s Board of Directors.

The Mt. Gilead BOE will next meet Feb­ru­ary 19 at 7 p.m. at the admin­is­tra­tive build­ing on Cherry St.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 23 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.