Back to School

Ohio County Schools opened its doors this morning to welcome students back for the first day of the 2024-25 school year.

“We are ready to go and ready to get off to a good start. We can’t wait to see all those smiling faces again in the morning,” School Superintendent Seth Southard said in a Tuesday morning interview.

Changes at the schools this year involve measures aimed at making the schools safer.

Middle school students noticed a change as soon as they entered the school this morning. Over the summer, metal detectors were placed at the school. Last year the district installed metal detectors at the high school just before spring break and in the near future, the Area Technology Center will also have them installed.

Another measure involving school safety was the addition of a fifth school resource officer. Prior to this year there were four SRO’s, who the district contracts through the Ohio County Sheriff’s Department. There has been a full-time office at both the high and middle schools, one officer that is shared between Fordsville and Horse Branch Elementary Schools, one that is shared between Western and Southern Elemetnary School and this year they have added a new officer to be shared btween Beaver Dam and Wayland Alexander Elementary Schools.

“Now all of our schools will have at least a half-time officer on campus,” Southard said.

While staffing issues and shortages have seemed to make headlines nationwide, Southard said that Ohio County is fully staffed.

“We are not where I wish we were as far as having a lot of depth,” Southard said about the transportation department. “But we have all of our routes filled.”

The district likes to have four to five full-time substitute drivers and it currently has two or three on the roster, but three more should be available by the beginning of September, he said.

“So right now there isn’t much depth but in a month’s time we will be back to where we have all the full-time subs filled.”

All the faculty positions are filled to start the new year, but that didn’t come without challenges Southard said.

“It was a little bit of a challenge this year getting every position filled but we currently have that,” he said. “We have someone in every spot so we are ready to go fully staffed.”

The school calendar calls for no classes: Sept. 2 - Labor Day; Oct. 7-11 - Fall Break; Nov. 5 - Election Day; Nov. 27-29 - Thanksgiving Break; Dec. 23 - Jan. 3 - Christmas Break; Jan. 1 - New Year’s Day; Jan. 20 - Martin Luther King Jr. Day; Feb. 17 - President’s Day (possible make-up day); March 31- April 4 - Spring Break. The last day of school is set for May 14.

Southard said Non-Traditional Instruction days are available for the district, but he believes in trying to make up snow days instead of using NTI days.

“I am a little old-fashioned. As long as we can make the days up and still get out of school before Memorial Day that is my preferred method,” he said.

If there is extremely bad weather or something occurs at a school requiring the district to have to miss several days at some point in time, Southard said he would be willing to look at taking NTI days.

“If I had to implement them to make sure we still get out in a timely manner, I will but as long as we miss the average number of days, I believe it is more important that we have school than sending packets home. We have so many who don’t have the ability to have internet (to do NTI work) and I don’t think it is fair to them.”