PW students share projects with board, discuss conference

The Palestine-Wheatley School Board recently entertained visits from elementary and high school students who made presentations on recent projects they have completed. During the meeting, the board also hired two new teachers and adopted a policy to allow for a service therapy dog to be adopted for the school. At the elementary school, students in third through sixth grades had a "Living Wax Museum" where students would pick a famous person from history and give a presentation while dressed as the person. "Our GT students lined the main hallway for a living wax museum all the way down to the gym," said Johna Burchett, the gifted and talented teacher at the elementary campus. "We had great participation. They had to go in depth and research their person, create their presentation poster and then deliver it as people stopped by to ask who they were." Board members heard presentations from sixth grader Jude Davis as Walt Disney, fifth grader Lucy Hall as Anna Pavlova, fourth grader Lincoln Davis as Abraham Lincoln and third grader Carter Daughterty as Elvis Presley. High school principal Dustin Dearman introduced members of the EAST program to the board for a presentation of what they did at the EAST conference this year. "They go to a conference each year in Hot Springs right before spring break. They have to put together a booth and show off all of the different projects they do, community service wise, through technology throughout the year,” said Dearman. Student Allie Busby said she served on the EAST conference leadership team this year rather than the PW EAST team. “We are all students in the EAST program," said Busby. "As most of you know, we just recently went to EAST conference and some of our students at EAST conference were finalists for one of the competitions, which, over 50 schools enter each competition. It was really neat for us to be in the top three. We didn't win, but top three was pretty good. I technically wasn't on the EAST conference team this year as I was a part of the leadership team at conference. I was a worker and not technically there with our school. That was good for me because I met a lot of good people, had a lot of good experiences and learned a lot." EAST team member Maxwell Wilburn shared with the board that after learning what EAST was, he was excited to get his creative ideas out. "This is actually my first year at EAST conference and my second year in the EAST class," said Wilburn. "Last year, I didn't really know much about EAST, so I was just in the class, doing the work. But, when I figured out that EAST was about making a difference in our community, it was just a really exciting way to get my creative ideas out there."Wilburn noted the favorite project he completed as part of EAST is the PW Sports App website. "A project I started last year and finished in September is our Palestine-Wheatley Sports App," said Wilburn. "The athletic information was really hard to get because it was posted on Facebook but other than that, it was just word of mouth. I thought, why not have an area where you can just get all of that in one place? I made this on Wix.com and it is actually a website. You can take the website and put it on your home screen, which is why I call it an app. "It has everything you need from schedules and rosters to real life game time," continued Wilburn. "It is also connected to our sports livestream, which you can watch whenever we livestream a game. That was probably my favorite project." Palestine-Wheatley Superintendent Ryan Halbert told the board that he was stopped by many different administrators at the conference so that they could brag on the PW students in attendance. "I will add, when I went to visit them at EAST Conference, I had so many different administrators stop me and tell me how polite our kids are and just bragging on our kids," said Halbert. "I want to thank Mrs. Maria McCoy for all that she does with our EAST program." According to Halbert, the board has the opportunity to pass a new policy that would allow for the district to have a therapy service dog on campus. Palestine-Wheatley Elementary School Counselor Alyssa Bailey introduced Moose to board members, explaining that he already has his basic commands down pat. "We have a unique opportunity here for a therapy dog," said Halbert. "She has Moose, who is a chocolate lab and he is getting certified to be a service dog. We have the opportunity where we can pass a policy to where we can have a service animal on campus for emotional support for our kids." "Moose is my personal dog from home and I have had him for seven years. He will be eight this October," said Bailey. "He has his basic commands down, which is the first step. They do not allow therapy dogs to be certified until they are one, so they can get these basic commands down. So, since we are seven and have the basic commands down, we actually are one step ahead of other schools." According to Bailey, she would like to get Moose “good citizen” tested by summer to move forward with the eight-week allegiance therapy dog certification course. "In the state of Arkansas, there are two different things you can do to have your dog certified to be in a school or facility and the main thing they look for is the AKC Good Citizen test, so that is our first step," said Bailey. "I have reached out to five or six people surrounding us as there is no one local who does it at their facilities. PetSmart does it, but I would like to not use a corporation. I would rather use someone who has been vetted for things like what I am looking for for our school.” Halbert recommended the board pass the policy as well as vote in favor to adopt Moose for the district once he has passed all certifications. "In your packets, you have quite a bit of information," said Halbert. "There is a research study about the use of therapy dogs in the classroom, information about getting certified, information on Moose and there is a sample of a family letter in there that families can use to opt out of this program if they want to. There is also a board policy on here. I recommend that we adopt the board policy that we allow service animals on campus. My second recommendation is that once Moose has his certification and is ready to move onto campus, that we adopt Moose as Palestine Wheatley's service therapy dog." The board unanimously approved each recommendation. The board also unanimously voted to hire two new teachers for the high school, Kailon Davis and Steve Watkins. "We have hired Kailon Davis as a social studies teacher as well as assistant football, basketball and track coach. Kailon was on the Last Chance U Netflix show and played football at Arkansas State University as well as the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff,”said Halbert. “We also hired Steve Watkins as a high school English teacher. Steve is an accomplished author, with a book that appeared on the Amazon best sellers list. We are very excited to have both of them joining us here at PW."

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