School News

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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.