Sargent students delivered a mountain of pet supplies to Conour Animal Shelter. The supplies came at an important time since the shelter is at full capacity. National Honor Society students who visited the shelter on Monday were Stoan Holmes, Elora Smith, Zach Fuchs, Caleb Hsu, Ryan Holland, Akyia Ross, Eduardo Gonzales, Alexia Aguilera, Gracie Burkhart, Jeni Johnson and Cole Seger. NHS students who could not attend included Clay Kimberling, Kendra Sears, Drew Smith, Kristen David, Breannen Maxwell and Angelica Urbina.

MONTE VISTA— The Sargent Board of Education held its monthly meeting on Thursday, Dec 13 rather than the last Monday of the month due to the upcoming holidays.
Student members of Future Farmers of America presented a recap of their trip to the 91st National FFA Convention and Expo, held in Indianapolis, Ind. in October. Several students attended the convention, which offered workshops and lectures, a Garth Brooks concert and tours to Ardent Mills and National Beef. The students attended a career fair and took a tour of the Indianapolis Speedway. And they went to Cinch World’s Toughest Rodeo and enjoyed watching a performance of bull jumping, which is basically a form of non-violent bullfighting that involves acrobatic leaping, diving and flipping over the back of a charging bull.
FFA students Danae Lucero and Andrew Maez expressed their gratitude to the board for facilitating the trip through support of the FFA program. To save money, the group shared a bus to Indianapolis with Colorado State University FFA members.

Pet competition
Another interesting topic of conversation arose before the meeting began. Turns out the school’s National Honor Society students concocted a competition between the elementary, junior high and high school classes to see who could collect the most pet supplies for a local animal shelter. The top class would win an ice cream party.
The competition started in early November and ended Dec. 13. “We’d done toy and food drives before, but nothing like this,” said junior high student Clay Kimberling. “We wanted to do something different. We wanted to do something to help animals.”
The classes got busy collecting pet goodies and two elementary classes ended up winning the competition hands down (winners yet to be announced).
The older students took a field trip on Monday, Dec. 15 to Conour Animal Shelter in Monte Vista to deliver several big containers filled with dog food, blankets, toys and other supplies. The kids also took time to visit the shelter dogs, which included one big kennel filled with puppies who had been born at the shelter after their mom arrived already pregnant.

Mill levies
Also discussed in Thursday’s board meeting was the certification of the 2019 mill levies---the General Fund tax levy for 28.751 and bond redemption for 8.938, for a total of 37.689 mills.  The board approved the 2018 Audit Report that had been prepared by Monte Vista’s own Wall, Smith, Bateman, Inc. “The report provided an unmodified opinion, with no material concerns
noted,” stated administrative assistant Lynda Foster in her written report of the board meeting.
The board discussed the pros and cons of the Leader in Me educational program for Sargent students as well as recent PSAT tests, which demonstrated the need for improvement in math scores for the upcoming PSAT retest in March. Also reported was the approved employment of substitute teacher Sue Plane and assistant coaches Marcus Ortiz and Nate Burkhart, who coach boys’ basketball and wrestling, respectively.
The board’s next meeting will be on Monday, Jan. 28 at 6:30 p.m. in the Sargent High School library.