Board View

 

July/August 2016

 

Carroll County school board Chairwoman Mona Kindoll has talked with some of the students at the iLead Academy and says it gets rave reviews from them.

“They love the concept. They love what they’re doing,” she said.

The fact that iLead is so different generated discussion among board members, Kindoll said.

“It was a leap of faith when we talked about it and thought about it as a board, and finally you have to think outside the box sometimes,” she said. “It just sounded like such a wonderful opportunity for our students that do want to go to a school like that.”

Kindoll said she and her board were concerned that the iLead students would feel “somewhat isolated” from their home district. “But it doesn’t seem that’s the case because they all have the ability to participate in their extracurricular activities in their home district and their sports and so forth,” she said.

The school, which enables the smaller districts to band together to offer what they couldn’t do alone, is an example of what can happen when school systems work with one another, Kindoll said.

“If other districts surrounding each other have an opportunity to do something like this, I think it would be wonderful for the students,” she said.