More students get chances to EXCEL

More students get chances to EXCEL
Mead Middle offers new clubs
Publish Date: 10/15/2009

By Magdalena Wegrzyn

Longmont Times-Call MEAD — At the beginning of the school year, Josh Mallot played chess at lunchtime with a group of fellow board game enthusiasts.

When Mead Middle School math teacher Eric Barton began an after-school chess club, Mallot immediately signed up.

But not everyone in the lunchtime chess crew got the memo.

“For a while at lunch, everyone not in chess club found themselves in a checkmate at every turn,” said Mallot, 12, who learned about chess from his father two years ago.

The chess club is one of eight additional clubs the Mead school has added this year through the EXtra Curricular Engagement and Learning (EXCEL) program. Other new clubs include the Young Writer’s Club, the Book Club, Craft Club, Quilt Club and 6th Sense, a choir class for sixth-graders. Boys volleyball will be offered in the spring, and the Shakespeare Club will meet for three weeks in March to study, dissect and produce a classic play.

The EXCEL program is funded by the mill-levy override that voters approved in fall 2008, which added $16.5 million to the St. Vrain Valley School District’s annual budget. Of that, $1.5 million is directed at implementing focus schools.

Mead Middle School chose to focus on extending the school day and broadening club choices, said principal Joshua Barnett.

Here is the full article.