The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON — The Dayton School Board met at 6:30 p.m. on February 7, 2024. School Board Chair Jeffrey McCowen, members Zac Fabian, Aneesha Dieu, Grant Griffin, and Superintendent Rich Stewart were present. Ryan Paulson did not attend.

The board approved the consent agenda, including accepting the resignation of Jim Su’euga as MS Girls Basketball Head Coach and hiring Andee Thurston for that position. The board approved Tamira Culley as the MS Girls’ Basketball Assistant coach, and Des Jones was approved as a volunteer coach for the MS Girls Basketball team.

Stewart introduced the K-12 counseling team, Kristie Korslund, Sasha Squires, and Caitlin Patterson, who presented to the board. Each counselor spoke about their background, history in the School District, and interaction methods with the students.

Korslund, whose focus in the district is substance abuse prevention, also works with the Columbia County Youth and Family Coalition and encouraged interested parents to learn more at  https://www.facebook.com/cc.cyf.

After the presentation, the superintendent and board members continued discussing with the counselors for about forty-five minutes.

The K-12 Dean of Students, Hannelee Farrell, spoke on school discipline, emphasizing prevention of incidents and methodology for data collection and analysis. The board members and Farrell engaged in an active discussion after her report.

Stewart gave an update on the search for a permanent superintendent and expects a list of finalists to be completed for board review at the February 21, 2024 meeting. The board will go into an executive session to choose candidates from that list to interview.

The last action was to approve the purchase of a used truck and stock trailer for the FFA program using grant funds earmarked for that purpose.

The meeting adjourned at 8:21 p.m. The next board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 21, 2024, at 6:30 p.m.