NG students go to teen book festival

By Editor | January 3, 2024 |

By Carmen Ensinger

One of the highlights of the North Greene School Board meetings is always the principal’s reports, especially the high school report by Principal Brett Berry.
For December, Berry reported that 12 students and several teachers traveled to St. Louis to a teen book festival, thanks to the Heitzig Family Foundation.
“They were going to try to bring some noted authors into our school and that didn’t work out so they took them to this teen book festival in St. Louis and the kids all had a great time,” Berry said. “The family paid for each kid to get their own book and have a meal. It was a great experience. It was something different that we can offer our kids that we don’t typically do.”
The Heitzig Family Foundation was founded after a long-time English teacher with the district, Steve Heitzig, passed away several years ago. The family set up this foundation in his honor. They also give out scholarships at the end of the school year.
One of the duties of the principal is to go into classrooms and just observe. Berry said he has noticed something that is happening in many of the classrooms he has been into recently.
“I have seen a rise in student organizational skills as I go into classrooms to observe, whether it is formal or informal observations,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it is a veteran teacher or a rookie teacher. I am seeing a big push for organizational skills in our kids. Much more so than I have ever seen in our building before. It is kind of a neat trend to see and something I duly noted in my observations.”
One thing that is being pushed very hard in the building is attendance. There is even a competition between the classes and even the teachers. Unfortunately, the attendance numbers for the month of November fell from what they were for the month of October.
“Our totals for the month of November were at 92.5 percent, which was lower than our October attendance,” Berry said. “We saw a tremendous dip right around Thanksgiving – the week before and the week after. Granted, there was a flu bug running around at that time and still is. But there was a major attendance drop.”
The staff attendance for the month of November was a little better at 94.36 percent. The class with the highest attendance rate was the freshman class with 94.9 percent attendance.
Grade School Principal Samantha Bushnell reported lower numbers in attendance as well.
“I put our November attendance data together and overall it was 91.78 percent,” she said. “So far this December we are a little lower. We are having a really hard time because we have a lot of sickness in our building with both staff and students.”
Thanks to the band program being reinstated, the building had its first Christmas concert in the building in perhaps five years.
“We printed out 150 copies of the program and could have used more,” Bushnell said. “Therefore, I would say that it was very well attended.”
Bushnell wanted to give a shout out to the North Greene FFA members and their sponsor, Josh Lawson.
“Our risers were needing some attention and the FFA quickly agreed to build us some new ones,” she said. “So we bought the materials and had it dropped off at the high school and Josh and his FFA kids had them made within three days. So, we owe them a big thanks.”
Bushnell said they were able to purchase some additional microphones so the concert sounded exceptionally well in the gym.
“Over the Christmas break, we are finally going to get the sound tiles installed in the art room,” Bushnell said. “It can get very loud in there sometimes and this will help a lot of our students with sensory issues.”