Buckeye Trail's Blue Ribbon

“We have a great community, great kids, a great staff and a great school board,” said Dr. Richard Hall to the Cambridge Lions Club. “To be successful is one thing; to sustain that success over a five year period is something else. We are very proud of what we have achieved.” (Pictured at right, Dr. Hall and Lion Tim McKim East Guernsey School Board President).

Hall was referring to Buckeye Trail High School’s recent notification that it had been designated a “No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon School.” Hall is the superintendent of the East Guernsey Local School District.

“We have been able to achieve this because we have offered intervention every day,” Hall said. “We offer academic intervention to every student. We try to do a lot of prevention to avoid the need for intervention.”

“If a student is not making adequate progress we require them to do Saturday school or stay after school for more help. We give pretests and posttests to make sure that the intervention is working.”

“We have rearranged the teachers’ schedules so that they can offer intervention,” Hall said. “Students know they have to make progress or they cannot participate in sports, in school dances, or other activities until they show that they are making progress.”

“We have had to deal with budget cuts during this time,” Hall said. “We have had to balance what needs to be done with what we can afford. We have had to do more with less.”

“We always wish that we could give our students more opportunities. We do have new buildings and a new athletic facility. We do the best we can with what we have.”

“We expect that we will have further funding issues,” Hall said. “The governor will present his new education plan in March of 2009. We expect that we may have to face more budget cuts. We will have to adapt.”

Hall served as a coach and as a teacher at the elementary, middle and high school levels in the East Guernsey district before becoming superintendent. “I have been blessed with opportunity,” said Hall.

“I’ve done about everything there is to do in a school district except drive a bus,” Hall said. “It takes a special kind of person to drive a bus with sixty kids sitting behind your back. I have a lot of respect for our bus drivers.”