The Shadow
COVINGTON Va. (VR) – The Alleghany Highlands School Board met on Monday, Oct. 21 for their regularly scheduled meeting. One minor change from many of the other school board meetings held this year was the location. The board met at Forum Hall, 100 Gleason Drive in Covington to accommodate the sizable group of local students attending this meeting. Which was a step everyone was more than happy to take considering the reasons why there were so many students attending.
The meeting was called to order around 6 p.m. and began in its customary way, which is a point worth noting. Unfortunately, there are not a substantial number of places left with the courage to begin a school board meeting with a moment of silence and recitation of the pledge of allegiance, but in the Alleghany Highlands that is how it’s done every month. This month’s pledge was led by a group of local students. One reason for there being so many students in attendance at this meeting had to do with the number
of students that performed well on S.O.L. tests and deserved board recognition for their success.
After reviewing last month’s meeting, which consisted of reviewing several bills and the approval of Covington Middle Schools trip to our nation’s capital. The board moved onto a few informational items which consisted of the cafeteria report as well as a report on the budget.
A couple of highlights from the meeting included Covington Police Chief Christopher Smith introducing his department’s School Resource Officers. First was Officer Mike Browning who started law enforcement in 1989 with the Virginia State Police. During which in 2007 he took on the responsibility of joining the Sex Offender Investigation Unit and remained with them until he retired recently.
Chief Smith then introduced and spoke about Officer Roger Dawson describing that he also has an extensive law enforcement background and served with the Covington Police Department for 33 years before retiring in 2018 as a first sergeant. Smith alluded to the fact that he knows them both very well and is extremely proud to have them working for the safety of children in the Alleghany Highlands School system.
Another noteworthy occurrence came when AHS Athletic Director Ty Dobbs stepped to the podium and asked the board for permission to go forward with creating a middle school soccer program which had been discussed during the merger but seems to have gotten pushed to the back burner during the chaos of consolidating. Mr. Dobbs outlined the importance of this happening to help develop their whole soccer program.
He also pointed out that a soccer program would help take pressure from the track program which had between 85-90 kids participated last
year, which is a number too great to coach properly. He also brought to the board’s attention that uniforms for this soccer program were already purchased during the consolidation. The board were all in agreement that it was a great idea that they wanted to see move forward, especially when Mr. Dobbs informed them that there were around forty students there that night to speak in support of this new Middle School Soccer team. Board member Wright made a motion to put it as an action item for approval which was seconded and unanimously approved, to the applause of everyone in attendance.
There was also a closed session portion of the meeting, and information about what occurred during that session will be disclosed at a later date. The board members all gave their final comments of which many spoke to how great it was to see so many students in attendance and once again congratulating all the children who were recognized for their outstanding S.O.L. scores.
The meeting ended at around 7:15. The Alleghany Highlands School Board will hold their next regularly scheduled monthly meeting on November the 18th .
