Friday, April 26, 2024
A program providing free lunches is one of many changes that may be in the works starting with the 2023-2024 academic school year at Granbury ISD, according to GISD Superintendent Jeremy Glenn.
During the Superintendent’s Report during last Monday’s school board meeting, Glenn touched on three exciting changes that — if all goes well — will be taking place soon in the district.
FREE LUNCHES
Amy Whiteley, the GISD’s director of child nutrition, is exploring the Community Eligibility Provision (CPE) that would allow free lunches on all campuses.
"Many of you know that during COVID, the government federally funded lunches across the nation for students,” Glenn explained. “That program ended this year, and so there is an opportunity for us to opt into a program that may allow us to provide free lunches for all our students again beginning next year.”
He added that 56% of GISD students are “economically disadvantaged,” meaning that “they live below the poverty line.”
Whiteley will be presenting her findings regarding the CPE to the GISD school board next month.
WEATHERFORD COLLEGE PARTNERSHIP
During the March 27 school board meeting, Glenn also mentioned that the district recently had a conversation with representatives from Weatherford ISD about potentially growing its partnership.
“(Weatherford College) would actually utilize our Career and Technology Center in the evenings to offer not only classes that help students obtain their prerequisites to go to a university, but to (offer) certifications,” he said.
He gave an example that there may be students who graduated high school two years ago and didn’t have a plan to pursue a career, but now are wanting to go back to school.
"If we can, we can offer certified welding programs, EMT programs, and surgery tech programs,” Glenn said. “We would like to bring those into a night school at our CTE center where we have the facilities to do that, so we're engaging in those conversations with Weatherford College.”
FENTANYL AWARENESS PROGRAM
Glenn also brought up his visit with Larry Kenemore, the project administrator for the North American chapter of the Rotary Club.
The Rotary Club has recently launched a project called Project SMART that addresses the opioid crisis.
"Rotary is trying to partner with school districts and they want to partner with Granbury ISD,” Glenn said. “They also want to partner with cities, counties, police departments, sheriff's offices, and they're trying to promote awareness and promote educational programs.”
Glenn said the Rotary Club has studied past programs like “Just Say No” and “D.A.R.E” to figure out the best effective measures that worked with those programs — and the measures that were not effective — on educating students about drugs and opioids.
The Rotary Club also developed an age-appropriate curriculum, Glenn said, that will educate students about the dangers of fentanyl and overdose.
“But more importantly, they offer treatments,” he said. “I was given Kloxxado, which is an eight-milligram dose (similar to Narcan) and what the Rotary Club is wanting to do is to provide this free of charge. The curriculum is free of charge, the programs are free of charge, and all of the support — to cities, to counties, to law enforcement — is free of charge.”
He said the eight-milligram doses of Kloxxado are free as well, and would be dispensed to local fire departments, hospitals, and law enforcement.
“Essentially, they will provide (everything) free of charge to our entire community, at no cost to the ISD,” he said, adding that the Rotary Club is pushing forward with a desire and mission to eradicate the fentanyl crisis.
More information will be provided about the Rotary Club fentanyl program — and the other potential changes to GISD — within the coming months.
