POTEAU, Okla — As students in Poteau head back to the classroom on Thursday, Aug. 8, Superintendent Scott Kempenich said this year is bringing many new changes for the district.
One new thing students may notice is updated facilities, as the district put $1.5 million toward improving its buildings.
“We got new carpets, we've got new marquees, we've obviously got new paint,” Kempenich said. “... We have AC in our gym. We've had a high school gym with no AC. As you can imagine, it gets hot in there, so it'll be a really big win for our community and our kiddos that are competing on that court.”
Another new element to the Poteau school year is the reintroduction of the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Community Eligibility Provision program (CEP).
The program will allow all pre-K to eighth-grade students to have free lunch over the next four years.
“Last year, we didn't have that,” Kempenich said. “Our debt got up to about $60,000 of unpaid lunch and breakfast bills. Our community is awesome. They came together and paid a lot of that debt off, so us getting that free meal for kids elementary through eighth grade is huge.”
Top of mind for many faculty members in Oklahoma schools is the new directive from the state superintendent to bring the Bible into public school classrooms.
Kempenich said this mandate will not change much about Poteau’s curriculum.
“It’s a historical document,” Kempenich said. “We have the Ten Commandments, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bible – they're all historical documents, and we've been allowed to use them in the classroom, and we will continue to do that when it's relevant.”
He said the district has Bibles on hand and will distribute them to teachers who want to have them.
“Our history classes and maybe our literature could absolutely use them. All of our principals have Bibles,” Kempenich said. “... From our end, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to force teachers to use them in a math class or others, so we're really hoping just common sense prevails and we provide the tools necessary to teach the state standards.”
The main thing, he said, is keeping academics the focus.
“I met with our local pastors and church leaders, and the family and the church are really the focus for religion,” Kempenich said. “Politics doesn't have a place in our schools, so I think from our end, we just focus on the academics and the historical importance of these documents. I think that does it, and we allow religion and politics to go elsewhere.”
Going into the new school year, Kempenich said the energy is high.
“We've got a whole bunch of kids excited to be here. We’ve got a lot of teachers that are excited to be here. We had our district welcome back on Monday. [There’s a] ton of excitement with our staff,” Kempenich said.