At the December 11, 2017 meeting of the Vance County Board of Education, the board gave its approval for Northern Vance High School to move forward in completing plans to apply as a restart school with the state.

You can read the full board briefs for the meeting online by clicking here or by navigating to it through the Vance County Schools webpage by clicking here.

In an email to WIZS News, Vance County Schools Public Information Officer Terri Hedrick responded to a series of questions, and she wrote, “NVHS would still be a high school for grades 9-12. There are no changes planned for SVHS at this time. All of the restart plans currently under development at NVHS, must be approved by our Board of Education before being submitted in a restart school application to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. There are similar plans underway at Eaton-Johnson Middle School, but they haven’t been presented to our board yet. The EJMS plan probably will be shared with board members in January.”

Hedrick also broadcasts a weekly Vance County Schools Update on WIZS 1450 AM, live streamed at wizs.com, throughout the school year at 4:30 p.m. on Mondays.  You can hear her full update from Monday, Dec 18, 2017 by clicking here.  The update about Northern Vance begins at the 10-minute mark.

The following comes straight from the December 11th Board Briefs online:

The board’s action came after a presentation by Northern Vance by Principal Andrew Markoch who provided details about the school’s restart plans. Markoch said the plans include establishing a ninth-grade academy for all freshmen, an arts academy, a career innovations academy and a digital technologies academy. He noted that all incoming freshmen will leave the ninth-grade academy at the end of their first year and go into at least one of the additional academies. It is possible that a student will be part of more than one academy based on their course selections. Within the academies, students will still have a choice of academic, honors or advanced placement courses. Markoch stressed a focus of the restart plans is to provide students with more choices and more of a voice in their educational opportunities. Another key will be increased flexibility in the school day scheduling and to have the school’s calendar align more closely to the calendar at Vance-Granville Community College, similar to the calendar now followed by the Vance County Early College High School. He added that the ninth-grade academy will provide students and their parents with more guidance and information as they start high school and should assist students in being more successful academically. “We want to provide our students with future proof programming to help them be successful beyond high school,” Markoch said. The restart school plans outlined by Markoch were developed with input from a team of staff members at Northern Vance, as well as parents and students.