Marc Hayot / Herald-Leader Arthur Hulbert , President and CEO of the Siloam Springs Chamber of Commerce , picks up the winning duck at the Dogwood Duck Race as chamber staff and volunteers look on .
Siloam Springs School District
The Siloam Springs School District saw an increase of 80 students , or 2 %, in the 2023-24 year , Superintendent Jody Wiggins said .
Total student population was 4,493 , Wiggins said .
The district has 660 staff members , Wiggins said .
The new Administration Building at 3050 Cheri Whitlock Drive was completed last October .
The 2023-24 school year saw the introduction of a new science curriculum for grades K-12 , Wiggins said .
Siloam Springs Middle School began to participate in the Professional Learning Community Project last July .
The program involves a three-year commitment from the middle school to work with Solution Tree representatives to achieve the PLC model in its procedures .
Solution Tree is an organization that has worked to transform education worldwide by empowering educators to raise student achievement , according to solutiontree . com .
“ It goes through three different cycles ,” Principal Jacob Hayward . “ The first year is the actual PLC teaming conversation — what happens when you ’ re doing curriculum design and getting that done . The second one is doing assessments , and the third one deals with what they call RTI or the intervention stuff .”
PLC is outside of state standards and is actually a process , Hayward said . There are 29 PLC model schools in the state , Hayward said . Doug Loughridge was named as the new
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high school football coach in February .
Loughridge served as director of athletics and activities in Alma since 2019 and head coach for Alma ’ s football program from 2012-2019 and Charleston ’ s head coach from 2007-2012 .
Girls soccer Coach Abby Jones announced her resignation in May . Siloam Springs went 19-5-1 this year and lost 2-1 to Pulaski Academy in the Class 5A State final .
Jones was in her sixth season as head coach . She also was an assistant coach for five years .
Jones compiled a 82-26-3 record over five seasons . There was no season in 2020 .
The district saw the opening of a $ 7 million athletic complex adjacent to the high school . The complex has baseball and softball fields and eight tennis courts .
High school students will use the baseball and softball fields for games , but the tennis courts are available for public use when the high school is not using them for matches . The ball fields opened March 11 and the tennis courts opened May 1 , Assistant Superintendent Shane Patrick said .
The Siloam Springs Public School Foundation raised funds for the project and Simmons Foods made a $ 500,000 donation , Patrick said .
The district ’ s building fund paid for the remainder of the project , Patrick said . The district also applied for a joint partnership $ 30,000 grant through the Arkansas Department of Education , Patrick said . The grant will reimburse funds the district spends and will go towards the tennis courts , Patrick said .
“ The new fields are all synthetic turf ,” Wiggins said . “ So that offers our kids the opportunity to play and to practice almost any day . I think that we will see more kids have interest in those programs in the future because of the facilities that were built .”
The district is getting ready to add a new social studies curriculum for grades K-12 for the 2024-25 school year , Wiggins said .
Celebrating r tng
Public P lc i Power o Stretching out for miles across the landscape , the Grand
River Dam Authority ' s power lines deliver the abundant and reliable electricity that thousands of our neighbors depend on every single day . These lines reach into public power communities , like Siloam Springs , as well as industries and electric cooperatives ; supplying them all with the power we are proud to produce , 24 / 7 / 365 . It ' s what GRDA has been doing for over 80 years .
We are proud to celebrate the longstanding and beneficial public power that has helped deliver the benefits of public power to the community since 1989 .
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