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The Hamblen County Republican Women’s Club held their annual meeting Monday evening with Superintendent Arnold Bunch as the guest speaker.

Bunch thanked the community for their support through the transition into his new position.

“Thank you for the great support,” Bunch said. “The community has welcomed Caroline and I with open arms and embraced us.”

He highlighted the reason he returned to Morristown and why he chose to apply for the position.

“The reason I applied for this job is because if the county is to be successful we need to have a good education system,” Bunch said. “If we are not turning out graduates that are ready to go, we can’t sustain the economy and we cannot grow.

“That’s what I wanted to do from the very beginning, because without a successful education system you can’t recruit for the industry, you can’t bring in partners, you can’t get jobs in place and it all feeds off the education system.”

Bunch then discussed several issues the district is facing and how he plans to tackle those issues.

“As many of you know we had a learning loss coming out of COVID,” Bunch said. “It has been talked about on national TV and it is true for us here.

“We dropped in several different areas but we are on a path to get back up. We have now have a standard curriculum in English and we are working on one for Math.”

The school district is seeing the results of COVID through the loss of social skills and the mental toll the pandemic had on students.

“One thing that isn’t talked about a lot that is on our radar is the emotional and mental health and the ability to interact in society is a huge loss we took throughout the pandemic,” Bunch said. “That is going to be hard gap to close. We have some amazing teachers and programs to close the learning gap, but the social interaction gap is going to be hard to do.

“We are seeing a lot of behavioral issues, mental health issues and social issues than we haven’t seen in many years and we are going to have to work with a lot of people to solve these issues.”

Bunch highlighted the economic statistics the school district is facing.

“We are 60%-65% economically disadvantaged and we have a lot of students on free or reduced lunch. I’m not bringing this up to whine about, but it’s the reality of what we have in the community and we need to help, support and take care of them.

“I know a lot of students go home and won’t eat until they return to school the next day and we are doing everything to nourish them and take care of them, because if they are not getting fed they are not learning,” he said.

As the Hispanic population in the area continues to grow, Bunch discussed how the school district is working to support them.

“Last year the number was 27% of students were Hispanic, this year we have 31%,” Bunch said. “Many of the students need English Learning classes and it is extremely hard to find staff to fill those needs and I have already talked with the board that we need to work hard to fill that demand.”

The third grade retention law may cause many third grade students in the state to repeat the third grade. Bunch discussed the effects of the new law and how the district plans to approach it.

“Just for third grade going into fourth, based on this new law, I will need to have 60 or more teachers that I will need to tutor students while in the fourth grade and 35 teachers to teach summer school.

“The district passed a resolution asking that power be pushed from the state back down to the district so we can look at how a child does on the bench mark test, the universal screener, their behavior and attendance. Many other districts in the state are working to pass similar resolutions.”

Bunch said regardless if the retention law passes or not, the district will continue to work to close the learning gap.

TISA funding and a new budgeting formula will give the district more funding based on the unique learning needs of each student.

“If we have a student with dyslexia or have another learning disability, the state will give the district a percentage of extra dollars to give support to that student. This is a big investment in education.

“It also has a new thing called outcome funds, so if you do great in literacy in third or fourth grade and you do well in math in middle school, you get more funding in the middle of the fiscal year so we are working to figure out what to do with those funds.”

Bunch thanked local law enforcement for its cooperation with the district and maintaining a safety standard at all the schools.