With a new school year underway, there are some changes at Greene County Elementary.

Principal Audrey Hinote says the start and end of the school day has been adjusted, with school now starting at 8:10am and the end of the day is at 1:30pm for early dismissal Mondays and 3:10pm on Tuesdays through Fridays. She explains the early Monday dismissal is to be in-line with the middle and high schools schedules and she describes the reason why the other four days’ final bell was moved.

“Is really to assist all of our families in our system with our buses, that was a fluctuation that we worked through. So we took some of the constraints that we had with our transportation and we really tried to make things fit everywhere.”

Hinote points out that along with some improvements to the building as a whole, with new LED lighting throughout the facility, to new carpet and the over 700 new student seating that was installed, is bringing on new staff. She details that with the exception of two special education hires that have a combined almost 50 years of experience, four of the six new staff hires were recent graduates of Iowa State University this past May. Hinote talks about all of the building principals going to an ISU Career Fair last spring, which proved to be fruitful.

“We connected with a lot of graduates from Iowa State (University). And not only were we connecting with current ready to enter the classroom teachers, but we also met people that were aspiring (to be teachers). So they were in the teaching program (at ISU) and maybe have a year or two left or looking for student-teaching placements, so we were able to make a lot of connections there with the graduates. That’s going to be really good for our school moving forward.” 

The names of the new hires are below. 

 

Dawn Cowles: 1st grade ISU grade this past May

Rothmeyer: 2nd year teacher from CB is in second grade

Harleigh Weir: 3rd grade teacher, recent GCHS grad and this past May from ISU

Sadie Larrabee: Behavior interventionist is also a May ISU grade

Elijah Davis: PE teacher from UNI

Lanie Fish: Pre-K, recent graduate from ISU this past May

Rita Rasmussen: Special Education teacher

Missy Schmidt: Special Education teacher