Superintendent Bentzel shares goals for remaining school year, focus shifted to reading and middle schools

As students prepared to enter the holiday break in Christian County and the fall semester came to a close, Superintendent Chris Bentzel shared some what some of main priorities will be for the district through the end of the school year.

Christian County NowChristian County Public Schools, July 7, 2023. (Wesley Irvin)

HOPKINSVILLE, KY (CHRISTIAN COUNTY NOW) – As students prepared to enter the holiday break in Christian County and the fall semester came to a close, Superintendent Chris Bentzel shared some priorities for the district through the end of the school year. Alongside Assistant Superintendent Jessica Addison, Bentzel gave an instructional update during the Dec. 19 Board of Education meeting.

During this update, they mentioned that Freedom Elementary School improvement is still one of the district’s top priorities. Addison told the board they have established a good team this year and have implemented a reading improvement plan for students.

The plan includes utilizing part-time tutors and partnering with the local Dyslexia Association to work with 50 students for one-on-one tutoring. Select students were identified by an assessment as requiring some additional guidance with reading. As student continue with the tutors through the spring, the district will be able to analyze the impact of the plan.

Middle school support, high school development

Bentzel added that there will be increased attention on supporting the middle school as they adjust to welcoming back 6th grade students, with 1,500 students combined in both schools. He emphasized that this time is very important to students so they can effectively transition from elementary school and on to high school.

“We’ve kind of not addressed or supported the way we should have in the past, we’ve focused on elementary and high school,” said Bentzel to the school board. “Middle school is a very difficult years to educate students because there’s not a lot of incentives with athletics or GPA, so we’ve got to work to support and engage our students.”

As the district is about 19 months away from the opening of the new Christian County High School, they have a goal of making the high school more intentional and engaging as part of the transformation, with a focus on workplace learning. They will begin the hiring process for CCHS soon after the new semester kicks off and are set on finding and retaining the right teachers for the right roles to make sure the school has the perfect instructor in the set pathways.

“We want the high school experience to be better, different, more engaging,” said Bentzel.

With the new school, a few more pathways will be added. They have been slowly expanding what they offer to students in preparation, adding five in the past two years including graphic design and growing the culinary and healthcare pathways.