Whitley County school district getting its own app

The Whitley County school district will be getting its own app that will be available in the app store on i-Tunes.

During the Whitley County Board of Education’s special called meeting Thursday, the board approved a $5,000 contract with Schoolpointe to completely redesign the district’s website.

“What we are going for is not just a website. Schoolpointe is a group that pulls together a bunch of different resources that you can utilize to build a website with,” noted Kevin Anderson, chief information officer for the school district. “They put all these tools in a package. We are basically paying them for that service. It is going to be a complete overhaul of our website.”

The app will be branded particularly for Whitley County. So far no name has been chosen for the app.

Board Chairman Larry Lambdin asked who would keep the content for the website updated.

Anderson said that Schoolpointe will host the information, but the district will provide the information.

“The advantage and why we are shifting this way is we have a website now that is somewhat dated,” Anderson explained. “It is a couple of different technologies that are tied together to actually work. What we will gain from this is that it will be more user friendly. We will be able to delegate some of this work out to the school level so that will make it easier for them to get their content up there in a shorter amount of time.”

Anderson noted the new website will contain digital forms that can be downloaded. The ultimate goal is to put things like student registration online.

The board also received an update Thursday from Chief Academic Officer Paula Rickett about the recently released Unbridled Spirit test score results.

“We are very pleased with our overall scores for the district,” Rickett said. “This is the third consecutive year in a row that we have been a distinguished district overall.”

Rickett noted that according to www.kentucky.com, the district ranks 13th in the state in regards to test scores.

Out of the district’s eight schools that have grades measured by the accountability index, seven are classified as distinguished.

Out of the seven distinguished schools, six are schools of distinction, which means they rank in the top 95 percent of the schools in the state, Rickett added.

In addition, the high school had a graduation rate of 95.7, which is 6 percentage points above the state average.

“We have a lot to be proud of in our district. There was a lot of hard work that went into that from the schools, the teachers, the students and the principals altogether. We are very pleased with that,” Rickett said.

Superintendent Scott Paul noted that he is very proud of what the district has accomplished.

“Thirteenth out of 173 school districts, we will take that,” he added.

In other business, the board met in executive session for nearly an hour to discuss personnel issues, but took no formal action.

Leigh Burke, the former chief financial officer for the school district who was fired in June, was arrested on Oct. 18 on charges of theft and abuse of the public trust in regards to an alleged theft from the school district this past spring.