Superintendent Nicholas announces retirement

Superintendent Nicholas announces retirement

By TOBIAS MOWERY

Staff Reporter

WORLAND – After serving Washakie County School District No. 1 for over a decade, Superintendent David Nicholas announced his resignation for retirement at Monday’s regular school board meeting. His resignation will become effective at the end of the school year, June 30, 2022.

“From the bottom of my heart, I’d like to thank you for the job that you’ve let me serve these kids and this community but I have my good looking grandson who I’m going to go be with for a while,” Nicholas said during the meeting.

The school board went into executive discussion after the meeting and spoke with Brian Farmer regarding the next steps now that Nicholas has put forth his resignation. Farmer, who is the executive director with the Wyoming School Board Association, will guide them in the selection process for hiring a new superintendent.

OTHER BUSINESS

Also discussed during the meeting was the master plan of renovations of the Worland High School.

According to Plan One architect Dan Odasz, the high school was built in 1965, making it over 50 years old and not up to code.

“Our scope of work is just the high school building itself,” Odasz said. “We’ve gone through and we’ve looked at all the previous construction plans that exist for that building. We’re trying to catalogue that information so we have a total picture. We are formulating a schedule so we can break improvements into a five- or six-year period. We need to be careful not to bite off too much. We’ll take it thoughtfully and break it into smaller pieces that can be taken in the summer time so we don’t get ourselves into trouble,” he said.

The plan is to overall modernize and upgrade the building while keeping things as they are, according to Odasz.

Also discussed:

Education Resource Center (ERC) was in the staff spotlight. Pat Anderson, Beth Hefenieder, Carson Maya and Shell Tennyson were at the meeting to receive the award.

Nicholas discussed board policies regarding supplies, technology, acceptable use policy and data privacy and security. No changes were made regarding these policies.

The school board discussed new calendar options for the 2022-2023 school year. None were approved.

The board approved the new sound system and phone system for the schools brought forth by business manager Charlie Cauffman. They will be replacing every phone in the district so they will be up to compliance.

The board approved an out-of-state science trip to Idaho Falls with Tim Barrus.