Long-time teachers announce retirement plans

HARTINGTON — Two longtime Hartington teachers have announced their plans to retire at the close of this school year.

The Hartington-Newcastle School Board accepted the resignations Monday of second grade teacher Julie Hefner and of high school math teacher Terry Hagen.

Hagen is the dean of Hartington-Newcastle teachers. He has taught math at the school since 1976.

Hefner has been a part of the faculty at Hartington for 39 years.

Both accepted an early retirement plan from the school.

The Board also learned about new Directed Health Measures announced by Gov. Ricketts on Monday.

The measures will have an impact on schools, Supt. A.J. Johnson said.

The new mandates allow for only 25 percent capacity at indoor events. This will have a huge impact on sporting events, Christmas concerts and other extra curricular activities, Johnson said.

In order to limit crowd sizes, only the parents or immediate family members of athletes participating in games will be allowed to attend the event, Johnson said.

The school’s Christmas concerts will not be able to be held as they have normally been, Johnson said.

He is unsure how the concerts will take place. There is a possibility several different nights could be used to hold concerts for several different grade levels, thus keeping attendance down. The more likely possibility is that the school will livestream a concert, he said.

Also Monday, the Board received an update on recent events at the school, including Parent-Teacher conferences.

Elementary School Principal Sarah Edwards said they had 100 percent participation in the elementary by using either in-person, Zoom, or telephone calls with parents.

High School Principal Corey Uldrich said parental participation for the 7-12 students was down this year. Only 58 percent of the 7-12 parents took part in conferences, he said.

Uldrich also noted that report cards were printed Monday and would be distributed.

Supt. A.J. Johnson also took a moment to publicly recognize former Board member Ron Pearson and offer “our condolensces to his family from our family here at school.”

Stay in the know!

To get news alerts on your cell phone, get the Cedar County News app in the ITunes store or  in the Google Play Store.