BOARD MEMBERS PREPARE FOR CONFERENCE

JACKSON -- When T. Wayne Lewis, Vicki McDowell and Jeanette Bollinger travel to a school board conference in St. Louis, they don't want to be idle observers.

The board members want to be information sponges, covering as many sessions and topics as possible.

The three, along with Superintendent Howard Jones, used part of Monday's Jackson Board of Education meeting to decide which sessions would provide the most beneficial information for Jackson. Jones suggested the group divide and conquer -- bringing back knowledge from as many different sessions as possible.

The Missouri School Boards Association's annual conference will be Nov. 4-6 in St. Louis, the same time as the Missouri Association of School Administrators' annual conference.

Jones suggested the members attend sessions that deal with relating a student's education to his career opportunities.

"Education is bigger than just preparing kids for work, but if we give them a lot of theory, fine arts and philosophy, they better have benevolent mothers and fathers to support them into old age," he said. "They won't have many work opportunities."

Jones also suggested sessions on block scheduling for middle-school students and on summer enrichment programs. He would like to see Jackson go beyond providing summer school classes only for remedial students and provide classes for advanced students as well.

The district already is providing classes for gifted students in grades 4-7 during the school year, and instructor Julie Walker discussed her students' progress with the board.

There are six groups of gifted students meeting in three- and six-hour sessions once a week. They alternate the sessions between morning and afternoon classes so students don't miss much regular classwork.

While students spend some of their time discussing the social and emotional pressures of being gifted, they also work on complicated projects. Each group has a different service project to complete.

One group of fourth- and fifth-graders plans to improve the West Lane Elementary library while a group of their peers wants to adopt a highway and conduct a park cleaning program.

Some sixth-grade gifted students are collecting money to plant trees around the new middle school and others are planning a petition to the Cape Girardeau County Commission to get some potholes filled.

The seventh-grade students have been working on a newspaper and the school yearbook and want to start a student council at Jackson Middle School.

All of them are doing individual projects and investigating the justice system, Walker said.