Grand Valley Community School, 1987

HULLINGER

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 5/18/2012 at 05:41:01

Mount Ayr Record News
Ringgold County Progress Edition
Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa, 1987

Grand Valley Community School

"We see as much place in the future for a small school as a large school." That's what William HULLINGER, superindentant of schools at Grand Valley Community schools in Kellerton and Grand River says when looking to the future for the district which covers the eastern side of Ringgold county.

There may be adjustments such as sharing staff members between districts, but unless something new is mandated by the legislature, the Grand Valley school district will be here for a long time, according to HULLINGER.

With 230 students in the district, including 121 in [the] elementary center in Grand River and 109 in the junior-senior high building in Kellerton, the district can put an emphasis on quality education for its students, he said.

Improving this quality has been one emphasis for the past five years, according to Supt. HULLINGER.

"If a student can read, write, use mathematics and learn how to gather new information by the time they graduate, then we've accomplished our major purpose," HULLINGER said.

One goal for the past few years has been to get the ITED tests for the district above the state average, and this has been accomplished, meaning that the district's students are among the top students across the country.

Five years ago a program was started to update basic skills in the school district. New reading, math and social studies programs were implemented and reading instruction was extended into the seventh and eighth grades.

"It takes a while to determine what you set out to do, but we are confident that we are accomplishing the goals the new curriculum was designed to do," he said.

Another change was to toughen up the requirements for graduation by requiring 17 units for graduation, including three years of English and two years of math course work.

"I would say that academically right now this school is in pretty good shape and we don't have to take second to anyone," said Supt. HULLINGER, commenting on the job the teaching staff is doing at the school.

Some progress has been made in physical facilities over the five year period as well. Trying to do a little each year in the way of maintenance, HULLINGER said that rooms have been carpeted, roofs are in good repair and physical facilities in solid condition.

A program begun last winter to put styrofoam panels in windows in the buildings during the winter, combined with last year's relatively mild winter, combined for a 50 per cent heating savings.

School financing is the biggest problem on the horizon for the district, according to Supt. HULLINGER. The uncertainty of what kinds of aid will be coming from the state level and the discrepancy that comes when sparsely populated areas like southwest Iowa are treated the same way as schools in urban areas causes problems, he said.

The continued mandating of programs from the state level without the extra funding to do the job is another problem.

"The state shouldn't shove programs off to the school and taxpayers saying that they have to be funded without any input from the taxpayers that will have to pay for them," HULLINGER said.

One example is the talk of a future requirement of 10 vocational programs in each school some time in the future. "The numbers of students interested in a program would make it hard to merit a program of this magnitude in smaller schools," he said.

He said that more cooperation with area schools or other school districts would probably be the solution that school districts would turn to if this were mandated.

Supt. HULLINGER also mentioned a regulation that makes it mandatory not only to offer a foreign language, for example, but to have students take the course. Sharing teachers between districts for specialized courses would also be helpful for this kind of coursework as well as for vocational training, he noted.

Supt. HULLINGER said he had some philosophical differences about the degree that vocational education should be stressed at the high school level. "We think that the purpose of the high school is first to teach students to read, write, figure and have basic learning skills and that it's not really the high school's role to turn out individuals trained for specific occupations," he commented. He said the area schools provide these services on post-high school basis.

"If we do our job then students can go on to college or vocational training with the skills that will allow them to choose about anything they want to do," he said. "In a changing world where most of us will have to learn more than one occupation in our lifetimes, the basic learning skills are of prime importance."

HULLINGER said that all by 35 to 45 per cent of the students in the school district go on to some type of further schooling after high school and that a recent study showed that after two years a recent class still had 57 per cent of students in further educational pursuits.

"We will continue to do the best we can in the diversity of offerings and career programing, but our main goal is to teach basic skills so the youth will have the necessities to make their way in the world," he said.

Submission by Mike Avitt, May of 2012