All four area school superintendents in Clinton County said Wednesday night they are ready to go for the 2022-23 school year.
The superintendent’s converged on the Frankfort Walmart Wednesday for Shine 99’s annual Stuff the Bus event which is the unofficial start of the school year in Clinton County.
This an interesting group of superintendents considering that Rossville Superintendent Dr. Jim Hanna is the patriarch of the group as he begins his 23rd year at Rossville. Clinton Prairie Superintendent Scott Miller is beginning his second full year, while Community Schools of Frankfort Superintendent Dr. Matt Rhoda and Clinton Central Superintendent Jeremy Fewell are getting ready for their first full year at their respective schools.
Hanna was asked what the major difference in schools this year compared to last.
“There’s some changes in staffing as I’m sure everybody has,” said Hanna. “The changes aren’t very many. The biggest challenge is road construction with 39 and 26. But we planned for that. We worked with State Highway and we’ll work those issues like we did last year.”
Miller said construction is pretty much over at Prairie.
“We have some new kindergarten classrooms that we’ll be using for the first time this year,” he said. “We have a new playground. We have some new outside athletic projects that we’re finishing up. We’ll have some new lights hopefully going in at the football field and we complete renovation of our baseball field.”
Clinton Central also has some construction going on. But, according to Fewell, it won’t be until after Christmas.
“We’re still kind of in the planning process,” said Fewell. “We’ve got things pretty well solidified and finalized. So we’re just tweaking some things and we’ll be ready to go in the late winter, early spring.”
Rhoda will be in his first full year as he replaces Joel McKinney as superintendent.
“We’ll be working together as a team to achieve a common goal,” said. Rhoda. “That will be a little different this year. Nothing too drastic this year other than the fact we want to build a culture in our community in our school that produces great kids.”