Published: August 14, 2008 09:33 pm      

Madison County Schools, EKU partner for dual credit courses

Students at Madison Central and Madison Southern high schools soon will be able to earn college credit while taking classes without leaving their buildings.

The Madison County Board of Education approved a memorandum of agreement Thursday with Eastern Kentucky University for several pilot dual-credit courses.

Eligible students will have the opportunity during the 2008-09 pilot year to earn both high school and college credit by taking two English and two math courses.

“I’m happy to say that dual credit is a reality in Madison County,” said Randy Peffer, district chief academic officer. “We do have students enrolled. That will continue to grow up until next Tuesday.”

Melanie Scott of Madison Central will teach college algebra in the fall and college calculus in the spring.

Karen Devere of Madison Southern will offer English 101 and 102 during the fall and spring semesters, respectively.

The courses will be broadcast live to students at the other high school using distance-learning technology.

In order to be eligible for enrollment in dual-credit courses, students must have at least a composite score of 21 on the ACT, at least a 2.75 grade-point average and a recommendation from their high school principal or guidance counselor.

To take the English courses, students must have scored at least a 19 on the ACT.

For the math courses, an ACT score of 22 on the math section is needed.

The amount and level of credit for each course will be determined by EKU according to its standards.

The students enrolled in dual-credit courses will pay 20 percent of the normal per credit hour rate to EKU.

Seniors participating in the program are eligible to receive one free college course per semester through EKU’s Jump Start program.

While federal and state financial aid is not available to dual-credit students, they can apply for a scholarship through their guidance counselor.

“Both ends of the county will have access to four college classes this school year,” Peffer said. “Therefore, if they’re seniors this year, they could exit high school with 12 college credit hours, which is a great opportunity for our students.”

Parents also will have a new option to pay for their children’s school meals after the board approved an online payment request.

The district’s food service software, LunchBox, has partnered with eFunds for Schools to create an online payment solution.

The program will give parents a direct link to the student’s cafeteria account so they can deposit funds as well as monitor and influence the student’s food choices.

The parent will be assigned two accounts that offer a wide range of options.

With the LunchBox account, a parent can:

• View and print the student’s cafeteria transaction history.

• Set spending limits for the student.

• Limit or prevent the purchase of a la carte items by the student.

• Check to see how much money the student has in his/her cafeteria account.

• Quickly access the eFunds for Schools account to deposit funds.

With the eFunds for Schools account, a parent can make deposits to the student’s cafeteria account.

The payment options include using a check or credit card.

If a parent has more than one student in the district, transactions for all of them can be combined to save on transaction fees.

In most cases, the funds are in the student’s account within three minutes.

The parents will access their students' account by using the students district student ID number, which is unique to every student and does not change each year.

Parents also can set up an e-mail notification to alert them when their students balance is low.

Other options include an automatic payment of a specific dollar amount and reoccurring payments by a specific date.

Parents can view their students transactions showing what they ate, when they ate, how they paid, deposits on account, how the deposit was made and the current balance.

The cost to the district for the program is $500 for set up and training.



Bryan Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@richmondregister.com or 624-6691.