Editor’s Note: This is the second story in an ongoing series about what area schools have done in preparation for the upcoming school year.
In between his commitments as athletic director and head football coach, Newton County Academy’s headmaster, Steve Nelson has been working on two top priorities – personnel and teaching materials for this school year. Nelson is beginning his second year at the school and sees those two things have the greatest impact on students’ learning, therefore, it is where he directed his time and the school’s money.
“I think the number one thing personally that I did was for our staff,” Nelson said. “I was very blessed and fortunate that I’ve hired some good quality staff throughout the summer to replace the good people that did not come back to work here at Newton County Academy. That’s my number one goal here is to get the best quality people to teach our kids because that is the biggest job that we have throughout the year.”
New faculty members include K5 teacher Dawn Powell; high school history and foreign language teacher Dr. John Cash; 7th and 8th grade history and science teacher Kim Barber; and history, elementary music and fine arts teacher Diane Douglas. Douglas has previously served as school counselor.
The hiring of Cash has also created a change in the foreign language being offered at NCA. Students will now be instructed in Latin which, Nelson said, may be a way to improve ACT scores. Various studies have shown that a knowledge of Latin helps improve students English and science vocabularies.
Staff member Shannon Wyatt, who formerly worked in the school cafeteria will now serve as school custodian. While Marcie Collins and Marcie Duke are newly hired cafeteria personnel.
In addition to the new additions to these positions, Nelson noted that a new position has been created at NCA. Since its beginnings in 1971, the school has never had a security officer, but this year William Lucy, a 1980 graduate of the school, will now serve as the school’s first security officer. Lucy’s prior law enforcement service includes 31 years of work as a probation officer and supervisor. He also served as Director of Security and investigator for Central Mississippi Residential Center. He has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.
“This is a new position that the school board wanted to be proactive on and not reactive to,” Nelson said. “They felt the need after all the violence going on nationwide, and you hate to say this, but it might be just a matter of time, so we’ve hired Mr. William Lucy.”
After personnel the next thing on the list for changes was textbooks, Nelson said. Taking money from the school’s annual fall festival fund raiser and suggestions from his staff the school will use a mix of ABEKA texts, a Christian based curriculum, and McGraw-Hill textbooks, he said. The school was also able to purchase 25 Chromebooks for use by students in all grades.
“We’ve gotten Chromebooks that we have purchased just trying to upgrade and give the kids the benefits that they need to be successful while in school,” Nelson said. “We tried to get as much bang for our buck as we possibly could. Teachers looked at it at the end of spring last year and then they kind of decided and then I looked at the money and we just tried to stretch the money as much as we can and give the kids what they need to be successful.”
NCA held an open house on Tuesday for families. The first day of school for students will be tomorrow, Aug. 4.
