The Covington Independent Public Schools Board of Education heard a pitch from Paxton/Patterson Learning Systems at their meeting Thursday. Paxton/Patterson provides hands-on learning modules where students get introduced to various basic work tasks in various career fields, including agriculture, robotics, nursing and other health sciences as well as various manufacturing trades. The program would be primarily aimed at middle school students.
“Our mission is that students have highly engaged learning experiences simply to make an informed next step in their learning journey,” said Christy Rogers, the representative from Paxton/Patterson who presented the program to the board.
Paxton/Patterson quoted the start-up price for the program at $110,685. District staff said that the money to pay for the program would come from various funding sources within the budget.
Many board members expressed support for such a program, at least in the abstract, but there were questions about the details.
“I think the devil is going to be in the details of how we coordinate all this,” said Board President Tom Haggard, “because there’s going to have to be a lot of coordination.”
The board placed the choice of whether to buy and implement the program on the regular agenda for their next meeting on Feb. 21. This means they will discuss the program more before casting a vote on whether or not to implement it.
You can see Paxton/Patterson’s full presentation and hear the board’s subsequent discussion on implementation and funding at the board of education’s YouTube page.