Mount Vernon is starting to look at adding an agriculture program to curriculum in the future.
Superintendent Matt Leeman met with superintendent Autumn Pino to investigate any operational sharing that could be conducted between Springville and Lisbon Schools. Lisbon Schools is tapped out on opera- tional sharing, but there could be sharing opportunities for Springville. For Mount Vernon Schools, the need is for a potential transportation director sharing agreement.
During that discussion, Leeman and Pino visited about options for sharing educational programs between the two districts. One area that was floated was an ag program. That would be a 28E Agreement between the two districts.
Leeman said in his discussions with principal Steve Brand about possible barriers between the two districts for that type of sharing, the schedules between Lisbon and Mount Vernon not directly lining up and transportation were the two largest barriers. Leeman asked if there would be a possibility of finding an instructor internally who could teach a program, and Brand said that may be a possibility.
Leeman said if they were to offer a teacher to get certification for teaching the classes, they would pro-rate the cost of receiving that education.
“What that would mean is we’d lock in an instructor for a term of five years,” Leeman said. “If they were to leave the district early, they’d have to pay the remainder of the cost of their certification back to us.”
Leeman said he and Brand will be looking at the numbers to see if this is viable. “Worst case is if we can’t find this internally or enough interest, then we can work with Lisbon to potentially provide this career and technical education learning for our students,” Leeman said.
The goal would be to have an instructor teach three classes ag related to start and slowly grow the program from there.
Board member Tim Keegan said he was a huge proponent of this moving forward, noting the success at Center Point-Urbana and Cedar Rapids Prairie to institute successful ag programs at their schools. “There is no reason agricultural classes wouldn’t be a success at Mount Vernon in the future,” Keegan said.
Board member Lance Schoff wondered if the additional classes at Kirkwood would help as well for this type of program.