Quitman school trustees approved a calendar change Monday. The last day of school will officially be May 20 with graduation remaining on May 22. 

“May 21 and 22 were instructional days. Since we have already seen a decline in participation at home we are trying to give a break to a lot of our families and we feel like teachers are going to need some time,” Superintendent Rhonda Turner said. “We are going to trade those minutes in; we have enough minutes to take those two days off the calendar. It doesn’t affect our funding at all. Teachers are still responsible for their days so those will actually become teacher work days. Graduation day will still be May 22.”

Local contractor Ted Wilson’s bid for painting at the new administration building of $25,130 was accepted over two other bids, which were higher. The board approved to spend $37,109 to buy new English/Language Arts textbooks.

The board approved to file a waiver of educator appraisals.

“Basically principals didn’t have enough time to complete the process,” said Christopher Mason, assistant superintendent. “I believe all the observations were done, but they were unable to complete the summative because of us not being here.” 

A waiver of the CPR requirement for graduation was also approved.

“One of the requirements for graduation is between 7th and 12th grade is CPR through the American Heart Association. It was actually scheduled for either this week or last week. Since we aren’t here to do that we are asking for this waiver,” Mason noted.

The board granted Turner permission to hire and issue contracts to certified staff through Aug. 30.

Two teacher contracts were approved for Hunter Ballard and Kelly Muffelto. Ballard will fill the position left open with the retirement of Christina Johnson in the theater department. Muffelto will lead the East Texas Piney Woods Consortium, a CTE program, which will be based out of Quitman after being at Union Grove. 

Turner said she and QHS Principal Dana Hamrick have been discussing graduation.

On Tuesday Hamrick announced that the students will each be videoed crossing the stage and receiving a diploma with up to four family members present on May 11-12 at Bud Moody Stadium.

Then the videos, along with recorded speeches, will be put together for a full graduation ceremony which will be aired on the scheduled graduation date and time of May 22 at 7 p.m.

Chad Parrish with Creative Edge Photography  will be filming and putting together the video.