Lisbon Schools has approved hiring an agriculture teacher at the district for the 2024-25 school year.
Lisbon superintendent Autumn Pino said the decision came about when talking to students at Lisbon about career and technical education experiences the district should work on focusing.
“An agriculture teacher is something many of those students noted would be beneficial,” Pino said. “Which makes sense when you look at our district.”
Pino said the goal is to hire the candidate at a half-time teaching position, especially for the first year to see how the program takes off, and slowly add classes to the program in coming years.
“Our goal in the future is that Lisbon would have its own Future Farmers of America chapter here,” Pino said. “This is also an exciting opportunity for the district to increase our opportunity for local partnerships with area businesses for collaboration.”
“It’s definitely an exciting movement for students,” said board member John Baker.
Students will have the opportunity to sign up for the local classes this March, while the district looks for an instructor for the program.
Lisbon approves purchase of Math curriculum
Lisbon approved the purchase of new math curriculum for kindergarten through sixth grade. The district decided to contract with Into Math, for $76,800. That cost includes new textbooks, workbooks for students that are renewed every year, as well as manipulatives for students.
Elementary principal Justin Brown said that the curriculum will be a big change for teachers and students, and the committee had worked to find the middle ground that will improve mathematics education but honor the instructional process students have already learned with, and Into Math fit that criteria.
Brown said the manipulatives, which are items students can use to help mathematics was a selling point.
The other was looking at their online learning programs.
“We aren’t rolling out the online options to students in the kindergarten through second grade range, because the program there doesn’t look like it is the most beneficial for students,” Brown said.
At the third through sixth grade levels, however, the system using an artificial intelligence model to adapt to how students are learning concepts and challenges and gamify math learning was a bonus. The school has a one year free trial of the Waggle software, which Brown said they may try on a single grade to see the improvements and if it’s worth the investment. The price is by student on an annual basis after that, and that cost to the district could be $10,000 annually.
Superintendent Autumn Pino complimented the curriculum group for their work and the discussions with the sales representative.
“I feel great about the price range for this, as it’s something we look at updating every seven years,” Pino said.
Brown said that they did not implement new curriculum at the alternative kindergarten, instead looking at ways to bridge the learning those students had from preschool with current math curriculum and prepare those students for traditional kindergarten in the next year.