The Warren County School Board on Wednesday, April 10, voted 5-0 to approve spending a total of just more than $192 thousand to make cafeteria improvements at three of the division’s elementary schools starting this summer.
WCPS Superintendent Christopher Ballenger (far left) and the five-member Warren County School Board met on Wednesday, April 10, in the Skyline Middle School auditorium to conduct regular business.
School Board Chair Kristen Pence, Vice Chair Antoinette Funk, and board members Andrea Lo, Thomas McFadden, Jr., and Melanie Salins voted to approve the serving line renovations at E. Wilson Morrison (EWM) Elementary School, A.S. Rhodes (ASR) Elementary School, and Hilda J. Barbour (HJB) Elementary School.
Specifically, the EWM cafeteria’s kitchen serving line renovation will cost $86,995.12. The cost to replace the kitchen serving line at ASR totals $38,759.77. The price to renovate the HJB serving line is $66,349.35.
All costs will come out of the WCOS Food Service Department budget. The money is already available as an expenditure and will not add to local tax increases, according to Warren County Public Schools (WCPS).
The new equipment will be purchased from Winchester, Va.-based MTS Equipment, which will deliver and set up items including new food serving counters for hot and cold foods, tables, sneeze guards, mobile utility carts, and refrigerated units, among others. MTS also will handle all of the removal and disposal of the current equipment.
WCPS Food Service General Manager Nickole Kinsey told the School Board that each project is long overdue.
The EWM serving line, for example, is very outdated and past its useful life, said Kinsey.
“We actually have a cooler that has to be on ice at this time in order to keep its temp. Maintenance has worked on it several times, but it’s not fixable anymore. So that was one of the reasons why we started looking at potentially just replacing that cooler area,” she explained. “It’s just time.”
The completely new serving line at EWM will look beautiful, added Kinsey, and there will be a much better and safer flow of food because servers will be able to hand the tray to a student without reaching over the top of the food counters.
The projects are slated to start this summer.
Complaints as reports
Prior to the School Board’s votes, individual board members took time during their regular reports to revisit concerns surrounding what are the official roles and responsibilities of the board and what those duties entail.
Concerns voiced by board members this school year have included communication and mutual respectfulness among members; possible micromanagement by the School Board of specific personnel or student behavior items normally handled by the WCPS superintendent and/or staff; the need for more time to scrutinize the division’s budget; and members advocating for their individual agendas rather than for WCPS at large, among others.
The School Board members plan during next week’s work session to discuss their opinions more thoroughly in the hopes of improving communication and cohesiveness across the board, and to get more work done.
School Board Chair Pence also addressed some of the public concerns expressed online following the board’s March 6 meeting.
“To be absolutely clear with everyone listening here and at home, our board does not have the ability to access student records, camera footage that includes classroom cameras, security cameras or otherwise, personnel files or any other documents of a similar nature,” Pence said. “We cannot get into PowerSchool. We have no sort of access on our Chromebooks or otherwise to do that.
“If there is a misconception in our community suggesting unrestricted student record access by our board, it is a fallacy stemming from social media and it is untrue,” she added.
While the School Board at times has received detailed information regarding isolated events at some of the division’s schools, Pence said that none of that information was provided to the board or received by members with malicious intent. “It is time to move forward from that,” she said.
Pence also said that “the bullying and the back and forth drama happening on social media is unproductive, disheartening, and it will continue to destroy the morale of our teachers and administrators and ultimately it is negatively impacting our students’ education.”
“We have highly skilled, dedicated teachers and administrators and they deserve the support of this board and this entire community,” said Pence. “They are responsible for educating our children every day. They deserve a board and a community willing to put their efforts toward positive change. They do not deserve to have their school community, their passion, at the center of social media hate.
“And while I am not in charge of anyone’s social media pages, it is unprofessional and inappropriate and I am asking every single person to stop,” she said.
The Warren County School Board also will conduct more work on the pending budget for WCPS during their work session, which will be held on April 17 beginning at 5:30 p.m. at Diversified Minds located at 465 W. 15th Street, Front Royal, Va.
There’s only a week between the April 10 and April 17 School Board meetings because the normally scheduled April 3 meeting was moved to April 10 due to Spring Break.
Warren County School Meeting of April 10, 2024 – Part 1
Warren County School Meeting of April 10, 2024 – Part 2
