Superintendent Ken Crawford

On Monday night at a scheduled work session, Highland football head coach Cory Quail gave the Highland school board an update on the football program. One of the main points he wanted to speak about was the weight room program being implemented and how simple actions like giving kids feedback makes a big difference.

“The kids freaking love this feedback, that’s the one thing kids were never getting before,” Quail said. “We give them specific feedback of how they’re performing, what stage there are in, what the grading is, what their ranking is, and it gives recommendations that they work with also. This sheet is printed off just like a report card, and I sit down and have a one-to-one conversation with them, and the kids get that feedback. Now, they understand exactly what they’re supposed to do or why they’re doing it, and we’re seeing wonderful results from that.”

Quail then spoke about the financial side of the football program. He brought up how some of their equipment (shoulder pads, footballs, and helmets) were in desperate need of replacement.

“We’re way behind the eight-ball when it comes to equipment,” Quail said. “We have right now 71 shoulder pads, 34 of them need to be junked. We have four usable footballs; the rest of our footballs are beat up to the point where some of them are bumping a tumor on the side of it. There hasn’t been anything new ordered for the football program when it comes to that type of equipment for six or seven years. The football program, if you look at what we need to order and where we’re at -- that’s being generous -- we’re $15,000 behind right now.”

Quail brought up this issue with the school board in the hopes of them having ideas for how to raise money for the football program.

Riverside Community Visioning Committee

Christine Yancey, the Riverside City Administrator, along with her committee, led a presentation to the school board. They spoke about how to make parking and student pick-up at the elementary school better. Traffic can get busy at the end of a school day, so a plan was proposed to make the flow of traffic smoother and faster. They said they had five different concepts, like implementing a new road, to keep traffic moving and wanted to speak to the school board before taking their idea to the city council. 

“We want to just test the waters to see if it was something the school board might be interested in. We’re obviously going to be looking at some partnerships,” Yancey said. “We have talked about partnerships with the rec center, using it for some overflow maybe before or after school, but you know these are just some ideas. A town needs their school, and a school needs their town, we’re trying to get the two to work together.”

They also spoke about the development of a wellness center.

“Obviously, you have to have fundraising and, you know, a bond. A bond is a tough sell to the city council, I can tell you that right now. But for something like this, you know, I’ve told them all along, if you build it, they will come. And I think if you get this built, you will have more developments coming in because this is where everybody wants to go. They want facilities like this to go to,” Yancey said about prospect of a wellness center.

Superintendent Report

The superintendent, Ken Crawford, spoke about a vulnerability assessment the school just went through.

“They asked questions about doors, cameras, windows, all that kind of stuff. And then today they came and took pictures of everything, and that took about an hour and a half out here and 30 minutes at the elementary,” Crawford said. “Talking about our door locks and where the cameras are and how they go to the front and how all the door entrances [work]. Their big thing is like, right there, if someone comes in, they can chain those two together and they can leave. And I didn’t realize that.”

The school will receive a more detailed report in the coming weeks, recommending what the school should prioritize with their budget to make sure the school stays safe.