MHHS Guidance Department Website click
here.
Mountain Heritage High School website,
click
here
New Yancey
County Schools
Web Page, click
here
Yancey County Board of Education Meeting
The Yancey County Board of Education
will hold their next regular meeting on Monday, July 13, 2009 at 6:00
pm. The meeting will be held at the Board of Education office, 100 School
Circle, Burnsville.
NC Health and Wellness Trust Fund awards a 3-year, $227,000
grant for Tobacco Use Prevention Program
A three-year $227,000 grant was awarded from the North Carolina Health and
Wellness Trust Fund to develop a tobacco prevention and cessation program at
Yancey County Schools. This grant will fund a full-time coordinator based at
Mountain Heritage to focus on prevention and cessation strategies. The teen
tobacco program will help develop teen tobacco-prevention advocates, be a
catalyst for social marketing in youth, and provide curriculum, resources and
training for prevention and cessation issues in teens. The NC Health and
Wellness Trust Fund was created by the General Assembly as one of 3 entities to
invest North Carolina's portion of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
Student Request for Transfer to a School Outside District
Boundaries
Yancey
County Schools wants to remind parents that if you want your child to attend
a school outside the district in which you live, you must complete a Student
Transfer Request for approval by the principals of the school your child
would normally attend and the school your child wants to attend as well as
for approval by the Yancey County Schools Board of Education.
Even if your child attended a school outside the district in
which you live for the 2008-2009 school year, you must complete a Student
Transfer Request for that child to be approved to attend that school again
in the 2009-2010 school year; otherwise that child will be expected to
attend the school in the district in which you live.
A
Student Transfer Request can be obtained from any school principal. The
parent is responsible for completing the form, for obtaining principal
signatures from both schools (transferring from and to) and for getting the
completed request to Angie Weatherman at the Yancey County Schools Board of
Education office prior to June 30, 2009, so the request can be taken before
the Yancey County Schools Board of Education for approval or denial for the
2009-2010 school year. Parents and principals will be informed of the
approval or denial of the request by August 4, 2009. The following
information is the procedure that must be followed for all Student Transfer
Requests.
All
students are expected to attend school in the district where they are
domiciled. A student requesting transfer to a school outside the school
district where they are domiciled must reach certain criteria prior to the
request being approved. The student must be in good standing in the previous
school attended in terms of academics, discipline and other measures of
standing and progress in the home school. Acceptance (and/or removal) of a
student will also be based on the availability of space with the following
priorities taken into consideration:
1.
The student has a parent employed in the school
2.
The student attended the school the prior year
3.
The student has a sibling in the school
4.
Date and time the request was made
Upon
receiving the request for a transfer, it is the responsibility of the
receiving principal to obtain the necessary background information to make
an informed decision. In the event both receiving and sending principals
sign and approve the form, it will go to the Yancey County Schools Board of
Education for approval. In the event one or both principals do not sign the
form, the request is dead and will not go to the Board.
Once approved by the Board, the transfer is effective for the
remainder of the current school year only and must be resubmitted each year.
This
procedure also applies to all students entering the sixth grade who wish to
attend a middle school outside their home district.
The
transfer assignment will be effective for one year (or the remainder of the
current school year) and is a commitment of attendance to the school
requested for the remainder of the school year. The student may not return
to the school in the district where they are domiciled unless mutual
agreement is reached by the sending school principal, the receiving school
principal and the parents. Once a transfer is approved, the school where the
student has transferred becomes the student’s home school for the remainder
of the school year.
To be
renewed for subsequent school years, a request for transfer must be
completed and all transfer criteria must continue to be met and the student
must be in good standing in terms of academic, discipline and other measures
of standing and progress in the school district. Availability of space at
the school requested will also be considered.
Students who are approved for cross
boundary placement based upon false or misleading information on their
request for transfer application will be returned to their home school and
the application becomes void. In the event a student’s domicile information
is falsified for purposes of attending a school outside their district, the
student will be returned to the school in the district where they are
domiciled. Students will not be allowed to attend a school in a district
outside their domicile based on false information.

On May 29, 2009 the “Front
Porch Pickers” from Bee Log Elementary were invited to perform at Dollywood
in Pigeon Forge Tennessee. The Front Porch Pickers were part of the
“Performing Stars Program” which was created by Dolly Parton to showcase
student performers within the Smokey Mountains. We are proud of our local
students and wish them well in their next performances.

Olivia Buckner, a senior art student at Mountain
Heritage High School just completed a new cougar mural in the new weight room in
the gym at the high school. Olivia will be attending Mars Hill College next
year. She is going to college to become an art teacher. Mrs. Christy Edwards (Mountian
Heritage Art Teacher) is very proud of her. Good Luck, Olivia!

Cindi Rigsbee (right) with
Pat Fender, YCS Beginning Teacher of the Year coordinator

April Woody,
Beginning Teacher of the Year 2009, East Yancey Middle School |

John Hogan,
Beginning Teacher of the Year 2009, Mountain Heritage High |
Yancey
County Schools’ Beginning Teachers of the Year
Thursday evening,
May 21, 2009, Yancey County Schools held its Third Annual Beginning Teacher
Celebration at the Burnsville Town Center. This year yielded a tie between
two very deserving beginning teachers. Dr. Iva Nell Buckner presented the
“Ivy Award,” named for and in honor of Dr. Iva Nell Buckner, to April Woody
of East Yancey Middle School, who teaches Language Arts/Science, and John
Hogan of Mountain Heritage High School, who teaches the JROTC program.
The celebration was
well represented by beginning teachers, Superintendent Dr. Tom Little, and
Board members Rhonda Boone, Shelia Ramsey, Van Thomas and Bill Whiteside.
Beginning teachers were given a chance to share their ideas, which were very
enlightening and entertaining.
Keynote speaker for
the evening was Ms. Cindi Rigsbee, a sixth/seventh grades reading resource
teacher at Gravelly Hill Middle School, Orange County Public Schools, and
the 2008-09 AT&T North Carolina Teacher of the Year. Rigsbee said she was
both humbled and honored to be named the 2008-2009 North Carolina Teacher of
the Year. She talked about teachers who give students with very little hope
for a bright future a chance to grow up and be productive, happy citizens
and she thanked the teachers of Yancey County for allowing her to be a
“voice for educators” across our state. Rigsbee has been a North Carolina
public school teacher since the 1979-80 school year. She received a
Bachelor of Arts in English Education and a Master of Education/K-12
Literacy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2004, she
achieved National Board Certification.
As part of her speech to the Yancey County Schools beginning teachers,
Rigsbee spoke of her appearance as a guest on “Good Morning America” in
September 2008.
After 40 years apart, Rigsbee and her first-grade teacher, Barbara Warnecke,
were reunited on national television. Warnecke was the teacher who, early
on, made a difference in Rigsbee’s life. “We all have teachers who made a
tremendous impact on our life. And not always do the teachers know that. We,
as teachers, may not know how we have touched someone else,” Rigsbee said.
“I just wanted her [Warnecke] to know that she was that person for me.”
Other teachers who
were nominated for 2008-2009 Beginning Teacher of the Year were Audrey
Tipton, Leslie Hilliard and Cindy Tipton. Congratulations to April Woody and
John Hogan on their recognition as the 2008-2009 Beginning Teachers of the
Year “Ivy Award” recipients.
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 This page was last updated on
Thursday, 02 July 2009 01:48 PM |