Greenwood board hires elementary principal, ag teacher

By Valorie Brecht At its last meeting, the Greenwood School Board approved a few new full-time hires as well as discussing part-time support for full-time roles.

For one, the board approved hiring Christy Zierer as elementary principal. Zierer will replace Shane Lilly, the current elementary principal, who announced his resignation as of the end of this school year back in January. Zierer comes to Greenwood having most recently taught high school English for the Prentice School District.

Additionally, the board approved hiring Jillian (Tyler) Lebal as agriculture teacher, to replace Loghan Amborn, who will be leaving after the completion of this school year. Lebal is a Granton native who taught two years at Abbotsford.

“She is super excited about the position and I think she will bring a lot of energy to the role,” said District Administrator Joe Green.

The board approved Aspen Hagen as an assistant volleyball coach. She is a Loyal native and knows the current coach already.

“I think she should be a good fit,” said Green.

Also, the board approved current staff member Amanda Schlough as the district’s reading specialist.

The board discussed business services support for the next school year. Jeanie Zimmer, who served as the school district’s director of business services in 2022-23, has been coming two days a week this school year to support Casey Susa, the new director of business services, in her duties.

“I’d like to cut that in half next year, so one day a week,” said Green. “Casey’s been doing a great job, but there’s still a lot to learn.”

Zimmer was originally kept on to manage the Elementary and Secondary School Education Relief (ESSER) funds, COVID relief dollars from the federal government, which have very specific rules for how they can be spent. Zimmer has been making sure money is transferred appropriately from one fund to another to get the most out of the ESSER money. Part of the ESSER money will expire in the end of September, and the rest in December, so there is still work to be done with those funds.

“There’s still a lot of transition,” added Green. “WISEdata is a big one (a data collection system used by the Department of Public Instruction) — that holds all the federal and state grants.

“So I would recommend the board add support for one more year. Casey wants it and I do think it would be beneficial.”

The board unanimously approved hiring Zimmer for one day a week next school year.

The board also heard about the potential for additional school counselor support.

“A lot hinges on the Loyal School Board, as they have a teacher interested in Loyal,” said Green. “We would be looking at a 66.03 (shared services) agreement to purchase a counselor for one day a week to do SEL (social and emotional learning) lessons. There’s no question that there’s a need for SEL for our kids.”

This past year, the school district had Madelin Nikolai serving as the counselor for grades 4K-12.

“The problem with having one counselor for two buildings is she’s always getting pulled. So if there’s a crisis or emergency in the other building, that takes precedence over the lesson. So lessons inevitably end up getting missed.

“What I’d like the board to consider is hiring someone to come here one day a week so we have that consistency with guidance lessons (for the elementary students). We could fit them all in one day.”

The district plans to use Second Step, a curriculum that fosters students’ emotional intelligence, empathy and problem-solving. It is different than the 7 Mindsets curriculum that is built into the regular teachers’ instruction.

“This (Second Step) gets more into the social/emotional health and tougher topics kids need (guidance on),” said Green.

In addition to having consistency with SEL lessons, Green also viewed it as a mentoring opportunity for Nikolai. The plan would be for Nikolai and the Loyal person to co-teach, unless there was an emergency, in which case Nikolai would step away to attend to it and the Loyal teacher would continue the lessons on her own.

“Maddi’s never taught; the person who’s doing it in Loyal is a seasoned, veteran teacher so they could serve as a mentor for Maddi in delivering lessons,” said Green.

“We’re at a time where more than they ever have been, SEL lessons are very much needed,” he added.

Although the board did not take a formal vote, they did give their “yes” to Green to continue pursuing this option.

The board unanimously approved a Spanish Club field trip to Puerto Rico in the fall, led by Spanish teacher Nicholas Konopa. Green said the kids got to choose between Texas and Puerto Rico, and that is what they picked. They had originally looked at a trip to Costa Rica, but that turned out to be cost prohibitive. No passport will be required for Puerto Rico. The school will take two vans to the airport.

Another agenda item was an athletic trainer for the district; however, Green said he had no progress to report in that area so the board moved on without discussion.

Upcoming meetings include a Greenwood-Loyal joint school board meeting on May 29 at 6:30 p.m. at Greenwood High School, at which financial services company Baird will give a short presentation on what a fiscal feasibility study for consolidation would look like for the two districts. That will be followed immediately by the regular Greenwood School Board meeting at 7 p.m. Both meetings are open to the public.