Bob Smallridge
The Oak Ridge Board of Education will discuss a plan to possibly add more school resource officers during a meeting this evening.
The board will also consider a new timeline in its search for a new superintendent.
Interim Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Robert J. Smallridge, who is a former superintendent in the Secret City, said he would like to have one school resource officer, or SRO, in each school. There is currently one SRO at the high school.
Oak Ridge Schools will be closed Friday, and the Anderson County Courthouse will open two hours late due to the threat of a major winter storm with freezing rain and ice.
Anderson County officials said they would continue to monitor the weather along with local emergency officials and make changes as necessary.
Information from WYSH Radio
Students and staff at South Clinton Elementary School were briefly evacuated Tuesday morning following a gas leak.
Clinton’s police and fire departments responded to the scene along with crews from Powell-Clinch Utility District.
The Anderson County Commission and School Board have scheduled a workshop next month to discuss security concerns.
The workshop starts at 6 p.m. Feb. 7 in Room 312 of the Anderson County Courthouse. The courthouse is located at 100 N. Main St. in Clinton.
Anderson County, Clinton, and Roane County have announced that their schools will be closed Friday due to the weather.
Anderson County said its central office staff will follow established procedures for bad weather, and Roane County Schools said its central office will be closed because of the weather conditions.
Information from WYSH Radio
The Clinton city schools may have been closed today but when they do re-open, students and staff will be protected by uniformed police officers.
In the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting in December that left 20 elementary school students and six adults dead, school and city officials tried to find ways to protect children close to home.
The city and the school system are splitting the $50,000 cost for the officers through the end of the semester and will look for funding options when the budget process begins later this year to keep the officers there all the time.
Information from WYSH Radio
Due to the resignation of Clinton School Board member R.C. Hutchins, an opening for a new school board member is currently available.
As a result of this vacancy, the Clinton Board of Education is requesting that interested candidates attend the board meeting on Thursday, Feb. 14, at 5:30 p.m. in the Clinton Municipal Building and bring a resume to share with the school board. All candidates will be given three minutes to address the board as to their qualifications and interest in serving.
Bob Smallridge
Their first attempt to hire a new school superintendent ended after four of five finalists withdrew, and Oak Ridge Board of Education members learned Monday that bumping the potential pay range up to $175,000 per year could attract new candidates and better reflect market conditions.
The board approved the recommendation to offer a higher salary in a 5-0 vote during a special meeting Monday. The board also agreed to have executive search firm Ray and Associates of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, contact previously interested candidates with the new pay information, reset the application deadline to March 1, and set a start date for the new superintendent of no later than June 15.
The potential salary range for a new superintendent had earlier been set at $140,000 to $150,000, but two finalists from a search that started in June withdrew, citing salary issues, among other things, and a third apparently would have had to take a $6,000 to $8,000 pay cut to take the Oak Ridge superintendent’s job.
Students try their hand at manipulating a Remotec robotic system at a kickoff event for the 2013 FIRST Robotics Competition at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility on Saturday. (Submitted photo)
Students from dozens of area high schools piled into Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility on Saturday to get a sense of the obstacles they will be battling over the next six weeks. Hundreds of students, parents, and mentors attended the kickoff event for the 2013 FIRST robotics competition, a nationwide event in which students design and build complex robots that can tackle the challenges of a specially designed game.
This year’s challenge, which involves robots that can throw discs and climb pyramids, was revealed via simulcast on Saturday morning. Teams were then able to view a full-scale version of the competition field and hold mock games on it. The field, sponsored by Tech 2020 and assembled by the Hardin Valley Academy FIRST Alumni Club at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, or MDF, is available for all local teams to use during the build season.
During a Monday meeting, the Oak Ridge Board of Education could ask former school superintendent Robert J. Smallridge to serve as interim superintendent.
Tom Bailey, the most recent superintendent, retired at the end of the year, and the school board has not hired a replacement.
