This week’s Carbon School District weekly update had the opportunity to set down with Superintendent Lance Hatch who spoke about additions to the district office, combining the Lighthouse High School with Carbon and the upcoming bond on November’s ballot.

“We had a need to recruit someone for a special job at the district office and that’s to deal with some athletic responsibilities at the district level. We decided to bring Bruce Bean up to the district and we’re excited because he has so much experience and he’s such a great administrator so we’re going to benefit greatly from him coming to the district office,” said Superintendent Hatch. This move will bring in a whole new administration for the 2019-2020 school year at the high school. Castle Heights Principal, Chris Winfree will become the new Principal, while the Assistant principal will be Jarad Hardy who will leave the reigns behind at Sally Mauro Elementary, while Karen Bedont will move and combine her student body and staff into the high school.

Moving the Lighthouse High School is going to allow for more curriculum opportunities for their students. “We had all of the course offerings at Carbon High and we were thinking about maybe shuttling kids, you know how do we figure out how to do this and so we realized that the answer is to put them under the same roof and provide all of the services to all of the kids,” stated Superintendent Hatch. This move makes sense in that the services and classes will be a great addition for Lighthouse students and vice versa for Carbon Students who are in need of intervention and support services offered through the Lighthouse.

This move has now put the high school in need of more classrooms and an upgrade to heating/cooling systems – which will be listed as a bond on the November ballot.  “The school board, their intention is to go to the public and ask them to vote for a slight tax increase that would give us the opportunity to build an addition on to the high school. This addition will provide the classrooms and the office area right in that courtyard area is what we are thinking so that we can secure the building. On top of that we have an old boiler system that’s just too old so we need to replace the rooftop units with heating and air conditioning so that’s a big project,” explained Superintendent Lance Hatch. School officials would like to get student classrooms out of the modulars which are located around the school. The additional classrooms would provide more opportunities for students to take con-concurrent enrollment courses as classrooms could be used as satellite facilities. Further information about the bond and the needs of the school will come as November gets near.