Jefferson County Schools Deputy Superintendent of Operations Joyce White presented updates from her departments during Monday night’s Jefferson County Board of Education meeting, focusing largely on a USDA grant that is intended to help with supply chain issues being seen across the country.
“The USDA is providing schools across America with $1.5 billion in supply chain funds,” White said. “Supply chain issues have significantly impacted school districts’ ability for us to prepare nutritious meals for food service.
“These supply chains funds are critical funding strings that will provide us an additional finance resource for school districts so that we can purchase domestic food products as part of our school district’s effort to respond to widespread supply chain disruptions, enhance efforts to strengthen local food supply chains and help schools to overcome financial and operational barriers while we maintain children’s access to nutritious meals.”
The state will allocate the funding in the coming weeks, with each county that chooses not to opt out receiving a base amount of $5,000. From there, the remainder of the $6.1 million received by the state will be divided up based on student enrollment population.
“We must spend the funds by (September) of 2023,” White said. “Soon, in the coming weeks, we’ll find out what our share in Jefferson County (is). That’ll help us, hopefully, with supply chain issues and defray costs.”
White also provided an update on several bond projects as the district prepares to move into the summer.
“As you can suspect with summer coming, we’re already very busy planning for the set of summer projects in addition to the builds we have of the new schools,” White said. “Two of our instructional bond projects are in the late planning stages. The first, our exercise bicycles and e-readers for our middle schools, Mr. Joel Silver has been instrumental in working in that project. He has worked with schools and with middle school principals in order to select and implement the plan for use at each school. He is also in the planning stages with middle schools to provide materials, equipment and/or furniture for STEAM labs at each middle school.”
She said STEAM kits for elementary schools are in the late planning and implementation phases, which will include opportunities for training for teachers in the coming school year. Spring and summer projects include roof replacements at several schools, and White said the Page Jackson Tribute Hall and Washington High gym project will have updates soon as they are in the late planning stages. Several schools are scheduled to have carpet removed and tile installed, and the C.W. Shipley awning and the Charles Town Middle bleachers, secure entry ways, drainage and bathroom renovations are also moving forward.
