The McCracken County School District Board voted last Thursday to enter into a contract regarding the sale revenue bonds to improve the district’s energy conservation.
Prior to the board meeting, board members – acting as the McCracken County School District Finance Corporation – approved the issuance of the bonds for sale for that purpose.
The board later approved a contract with Ascendant Facility Partners LLC for a district-wide guaranteed energy savings agreement.
Ascendant Facility Partners is also working with the Paducah Independent School District through a guaranteed energy savings contract, where the savings can be applied to the payment of the contract.
The board also heard the district’s new food services coordinator, Cathy Lewis, speak about improving the school nutrition and physical education environment in McCracken County schools.
“This is our three-year required review of our health and wellness programs,” she said. “That means that we collected a whole lot of data from a whole lot of people at a lot of schools. Wellness coordinators at every school completed some information for us to tell us where we’re at as far as our wellness programs are concerned and where we need to go with them.
“McCracken County has done a great job with making sure that health and wellness is promoted at all the schools. The (site-based decision-making) councils have a written wellness program that is followed in all of our schools.”
Lewis said the SBDM councils will review their school’s wellness program details to see if changes need to be made for their school.
Lewis said there have been changes made to the food and nutrition in McCracken County schools.
“We are moving away from the heat-and-serve atmosphere of cafeterias that was kind of forced during COVID and back to more of a scratch-cooking atmosphere in our kitchens,” she said. “We are presenting healthier, better, more appreciated food so our kids will eat.
“We are also going to update our menu-planning software to make sure we are hitting all of our targets. The move this year begins back toward whole grain. That was kind of alleviated during COVID with the inability to get it, but we’re going to slowly work back to 80% whole grain in our cafeterias as well as working with our high school ag(riculture) department to possibly begin growing produce for some of our schools as well.”
The board approved the calendar for the 2023-24 school year, which includes an extra day off for spring break on Monday, April 8, the day that a solar eclipse is seen, with the path of totality moving through most of McCracken County.
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