Cullman City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff, from left, School Board President Chris Branham, CHS fishing national champions Landon Franks and Brody Hopper, CHS principal Kim Hall and fishing coach Kyle Morris stand with the Mossy Oak Bassmaster High School Classic trophy during Tuesday’s meeting. 

The Cullman City School Board recognized two Cullman High School anglers for their recent high school national championship victory during Tuesday night’s board meeting.

Juniors Brody Hopper and Landon Franks were joined by fishing team coach Kyle Morris as they were recognized for their victory at the Mossy Oak Bassmaster High School Classic over the summer. The duo notched a five-bass limit of 13 pounds, 1 ounce at Eagle Mountain Lake in Texas to best the nine-boat field in the tournament. 

Cullman City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff and Cullman City School Board President Chris Branham presented the pair with certificates to honor their achievement during the meeting. 

Kallhoff also presented the members of the school board with a plaque from the Alabama Association of School Boards after they received the Team Training Achievement Award for continuing their professional development, which is something on which the system has placed a priority. 

“I just want to let you know, on behalf of the employees, how much we appreciate you guys modeling professional development,” he said. 

Kallhoff also gave an update on the system’s COVID-19 cases, and said the number of positive cases is the lowest it has been for the school year, with a current positive case rate of .5 percent across the system. 

He thanked the students and staff at East Elementary School and Cullman Middle School for adhering to the temporary mask mandate that was put into place on those campuses, and said the student percentage of positive cases dropped from a little over 5 percent of the schools’ populations to less than 1 percent while the mandate was in place. 

Kallhoff said the system began an after-hours cleaning program last week that uses electrostatic misters and foggers and a virus-killing solution, and he appreciates everyone’s efforts to keep students in the classroom during the pandemic. 

“We have data to show that remote learning and virtual learning is not as effective as face-to-face learning, not just academically, but socially and emotionally as well,” he said. “So we’re excited that it appears things are moving in the right direction to keep face-to-face instruction going on.”

Kallhoff also provided an update on the system’s upcoming capital projects, and said the final design meeting for the Cullman Middle School construction project was conducted last week, and the drafts and prints are currently being finalized by the architects. 

The final design meeting for the project at Cullman City Primary School is set for Wednesday, so those plans should also be finalized in the near future, he said.

The bid opening process for the middle school and primary school projects should open in January and February of 2022, and the system will open bids this week for the project to install turf on the high school softball field, Kallhoff said.

The system also received an air quality report on West Elementary School from Terrell Technical Services, which found little to no counts of active mold in the school, he said.

“In most cases there were higher counts of mold outside the building than inside,” he said. 

Classrooms at West Elementary have been closed during the beginning of the school year after mold was detected that was caused by moisture from one of the school’s HVAC units. 

Kallhoff said the system is still moving forward with the cleaning services of Servpro and is consulting with HVAC engineers to find a solution to prevent the problem from occurring again. 

Terrell Technical Services and Horton Engineers will present their findings to the faculty and staff of West Elementary early next month, and that plan will be released to the public after it is shared internally, he said.