WSHS principal announces retirement

Willow Springs High School Principal Nick Schmitt will be retiring at the end of the school year, heard the R-IV school board last Monday night. After 30 years, in education, Schmitt told Howell County News the time is right to step away and, “let someone younger lead the high school.”
     “I love the Willow Springs School District and my job as High School Principal,” wrote Schmitt in an email to the News. “I am very thankful that Dr. [Marty] Spence gave me the opportunity to be his Assistant Principal 9 years ago. Each year, you have to evaluate where you are in life and as I thought about things, I felt like it was time for a change.”
     Though Schmitt is not announcing a next career step, he mentioned he is likely to remain in the arena of youth formation.
     “I have recently gotten back into coaching, with a youth soccer team, so maybe there will be some coaching opportunities that arise. I may get into refereeing High School soccer games, or maybe I will be a substitute teacher. The school can always use another person to substitute teach,” Schmitt stated.
     In this meeting, the board also accepted the resignation of middle school English teacher Kasey Eden and Career and Technical Education Director Josh Owens, also effective at the end of the school year. Owens declined to comment on his departure from the school district.
     Personnel reduction has been a conversation in the school district for nearly a year, reaching a crescendo when the district announced a critically low reserve balance in August.
     R-IV’s new independent financial consultant gave his first update to the board in this meeting. WSHS alum Kelly Lowe told the board he has begun with looking at the district’s revenues after becoming familiar with the FY26 budget prepared by the district’s first financial consultant, Dr. Carol Embree. The district changed consultants last month in favor of Lowe, who can, and has, been on campus several days a week.
     “It took about a week to find and fix all the incorrect formulas in the budgeting program,” reads Lowe’s update to the board. Moving forward, budget projections should be more accurate and a better tool for the board to use for making financial decisions.
     “I plan to watch revenues closely versus where the revenues were last year,” Lowe told the board Monday. “Expenses are next.”
     Regarding expenses, Lowe said he hopes to see, “a lot of red this year, because you’ve made a tremendous amount of cuts.”
     The red Lowe was referring to is information on decreased spending this year, presented in an app to the school board members. According to a report obtained by Howell County News, this app shows the FY26 budget 26%  at this point in the year, with spending down $1.49 million from last year at this time.
     The app itself, according to Dr. Spence, is not available to the public. He did not respond to a request for a citation from Missouri’s Sunshine Law that would allow the district to refuse to provide this access upon request.
     “The portal is actually an app on board member's iPads that give them updated financial numbers. It's not on the website or available to the public in that form,” Spence wrote in an email to the News.
     Lowe repeatedly referred to this information, available to the board members via the app, during his presentation. The full report Spence released to the News via Excel spreadsheet containing the information from the app will be published in full at howellcountynews.com.
     In Monday’s meeting, board member Meagan Jones asked Lowe if he believes a tax anticipation note will be necessary when the balance of funds reaches its lowest ebb this month.
     “It’s close,” Lowe said. "Right now, we are running… if we can make it through December.”
     As of the board meeting, the district’s balance of all funds was reported as $962,675.15. Lowe mentioned expenses of, “a little over a million with payroll coming out.”
     Last month, the balance was $1.09 million. This time one year ago, the balance was $1.91 million.
     The district will receive significant amounts of tax revenue in December and January that should resolve concerns about borrowing money to pay district bills.
     “I’m watching this pretty much every day to make sure we’re staying on track,” Lowe told the board.
     In other information, the board learned that senior projects are changing for the next school year. Now called CAPS, the new form of senior projects is, “a natural evolution, a reimagining,” of the decades-long tradition, said Senior Project coordinator Megan Wilson.
     CAPS is still the capstone of a Willow Springs High School education, but it will no longer be judged by members of the community, and the traditional community showcase of all the projects is likely to fall out of practice, “because of the negative,” Wilson said.
In other discussion:
-The board heard an annual summary of activities from students of the Interact Club
-The board heard that filing dates for the upcoming school board election are Dec. 9 though Dec. 30. Brent Colley, Matt Hobson, and Adam Webb’s seats are up for election this April.
 

In other actions:
-The board unanimously approved a contract with an online learning provider, allowing the district to offer its own online diploma for the first time. Dr. Spence told the News the district, “will be reaching out to any students that have left the district to go virtual in the last two years,” to invite them to enroll in the Willow Springs program.
-School board president Mac Gum declined to hear questions from two citizens present at the meeting. Each agenda features a “Public Comment” period, but Gum consistently suggests that any questions be asked outside the public meeting to Dr. Spence, or offline to individual school board members. Comments are allowed. Comments from one guest were heard until she began also asking questions about the online virtual learning discussed in the meeting.
-The board unanimously passed updates to MSBA policies.
-The board heard Continuing School Improvement Plan (CSIP) and Annual Performance Review (APR) data and approved the CSIP. Willow Springs’ test scores remain competitive, or better, than many area schools. They tested higher than MVBT, Thayer, Mountain Grove, Ava, Cabool, and West Plains with 84.6%. Performance data increased in English language arts, remained steady in math, and dipped in both science and social studies.