Mt. Vernon School District to get archery team thanks to grant, local donation

Mt. Vernon High School will soon be gaining an archery club. During the monthly Mt. Vernon Board of Education meeting Nov. 21, the board approved the addition of an archery club at the high school level. So far, a total of 65 students have shown interest in the club. Out of those students only five are currently participating in a sport.
Funding for the club was gained by a grant from NASP (National Archery in Schools Program) for $1,500 and Bowfreaks Archery of Mt. Vernon pledged an additional $2,000 in donations. This money will be used to purchase netting, 15 bows, 10 dozen arrows and five targets. The club will be using the old high school weight room as a practice space. The nets will be retractable and will have the potential to be used for multiple sporting activities. The club is planned to start shortly after Christmas break.
Graduation rates…
Also during the meeting, Superintendent Scott Cook also gave a recap report on the graduation rate. Over the last month, Mt. Vernon High School Principal Dr. Ladd, along with other teachers worked together to research any contributing factors that previous students who failed to graduate had in common. The outcome was that there was no specific patterns or an area that the students were being overlooked, and the only common denominator was that most of the students did not participate in any extracurricular activities.
The school is working towards improving this by encouraging more students to get plugged into a club or sport. There are ideas for possibly having an extracurricular activity expo during registration for students to have an opportunity to learn more about the different activities Mt. Vernon has to offer. There are also plans to add more clubs and increasing the apprenticeship program. This shows the students examples on how their education will be applied in their future life and career. Also, the district will look to fine-tune the at-risk programs by increasing the credit recovery and the Missouri option program effectiveness; and increasing upper-level course offerings.
 In other news…
- Cook reported that attendance for October was at 95.49 percent. The average daily attendance was down 36.31 students from this time last year.
- The filing period for the April 7, 2020 election begins Dec. 17 and ends Jan. 21, 2020. The terms of John Cowherd, Gene Ingle and Ronald Schmidly expire in April of 2020.
- Boys basketball coach Mike Ray and girls basketball coach Grant Berendt reported on the programs and the upcoming season. The boys season opened Dec. 6, at Nevada. The girls opened in the Carthage Tournament on Dec. 5. - Jim Cline reported that over half of the students in the class of 2019 graduated with eligibility for A+. Out of those 64 students, 40 are attending either Crowder College or Ozarks Technical College.
Closed session…
In closed session, the board accepted a retirement letter from second grade teacher Tammie Henderson. Henderson’s retirement was effective on Nov. 30, after 18 years of teaching in Mt. Vernon. Valerie Conaway was approved to be the substitute for Henderson’s class. Jessica White was approved as the interventionist paraprofessional at the elementary school for the vacancy created by the resignation of Hannah Bloomer.
Next meeting…
The next Mt. Vernon Board of Education meeting will be held Dec. 19, at 7:30 p.m.