CULLMAN, Ala. – The Cullman County Board of Education (CCBOE) held its monthly work session and board meeting Tuesday afternoon and after a lengthy discussion about potential maintenance projects in the work session, in its meeting the board recognized West Point High School Counselor Amanda Yearwood, the recipient of this year’s Alabama School Counselor Association Secondary School Counselor of the Year Award.
The board used Tuesday’s work session to meet with representatives from Schneider Electric to discuss a potential design agreement for the county school facilities. Schneider specializes in energy, electricity and automation management. The board went over questions with the contract and changes to potential plans with the company but ultimately decided to table the discussion for now and continue talking about it with Schneider in more detail before making any decisions.
Once the board moved into its meeting, Superintendent Dr. Shane Barnette kicked things off with a pair of recognitions, starting with Rep. Scott Stadthagen, R-Hartselle.
“I just wanted to take some time to recognize Scott Stadthagen and thank him for all he does for our school system and the support he gives our community here in Cullman County,” Barnette said.
Next up was Yearwood. Yearwood is the recipient of this year’s Alabama School Counselor Association Secondary School Counselor of the Year Award. Yearwood won the award for High School Counselor of the Year in 2014.
“Mrs. Yearwood is very quick to recognize everybody at her school, whether it’s faculty or students, for their accomplishments, but she’s not very quick to recognize herself. But I want to take a minute to brag on her,” Barnette said. “We’re so blessed that in 2014 she won it, but now in 2020, Mrs. Yearwood has been recognized as the Secondary School Counselor of the Year for the state of Alabama. She represents all of our counselors and does a great job.”
The board then approved the appointment of Ty Watwood to the position of media & communications specialist for the system.
“Ty is our new media & communications specialist for our school district. He will be in charge of social media, our websites, our communication with our parents doing virtual learning and helping to create a communication plan across our entire district for our teachers and parents and everybody,” Barnette said. “He’s been a bus driver for us and a technician at West Point and now he’s going to continue his work throughout our school system, and we’re pleased to have him. Ty has some experience as a manager at (WBRC FOX) channel 6 before he left there, so he’s going to bring some of that expertise into our school system.”
The board also approved the nominations of board members Shane Rusk and Kerry Neighbors to the positions of board president and vice president, respectively, for the 2020-21 school year.
Before the meeting adjourned, Barnette and board member Heath Allbright each gave a brief statement on the current COVID-19 quarantine policies in place for Alabama public schools and the challenges that come with them.
“It becomes a challenge, and it can be aggravating because you have to wear a mask, and yet if you’re within 6 feet of someone for 15 minutes or more you still have to quarantine,” Barnette said. “I would love to see that eventually change; I don’t see that changing any time soon.”
“It’s a shame that we’re sending people home that don’t even have a sniffle. I don’t know how we can change that but losing faculty members and support staff when they even have a negative test is ridiculous to me,” Allbright said. “The mandates and protocols that the State has sent down to the school systems are unbelievable and it makes it to where we can’t even function. We’re trying to pull off the impossible. We’ve had a lot of faculty members here in the last couple of weeks that are as well as I am today and they’re at home by State mandate for 14 days. We need them in our schools, and we need our kids in our schools and I don’t know what we can do about it but it’s an absolute shame that’s the only we can do it. I feel like we could come up with something better because even if they test negative, we’re sending them home. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Cullman County Schools will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday Nov. 23-27. The CCBOE will hold its next regularly scheduled work session and board meeting Dec. 10 at 3:30 p.m. at the central office.
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