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BRASHEAR, MO -- School has been back in session for just a week at Adair County R-II in Brashear and things are off to a good start. All thanks to the hard work by staff members over the summer.

Despite no major building projects at Brashear, employees were still hard at work fixing up things for this school year. While they were doing that, teachers were critiquing the curriculum to be more in line with the Missouri Common Core Curriculum.

As for the budget, things are looking good despite federal and state funding cuts.

“We ended last year very well. We have about a 28 percent balance for this year. We are looking for some federal and state cuts. We are going to drip into that more for the 2012-2013 school year but we will still be very good,” said Adair County R-II School Superintendant Shelly Shipman.

Shipman says with efficient use of money, they expect things to be fine heading into the future. Brashear had some staff retire over the summer which allowed little bit of money to be absorbed into other programs. This also allowed for the hiring of five new employees. This included a new physical education, kindergarten and third grade teacher.

“We started the year with all three of them very well and we are really impressed with all three of them. It is exciting to have them here with us. We had a couple other staff changes including a new high school secretary and new maintenance director,” Shipman said.

The school hopes to continue excelling in their education system and make it nine years in a row meeting standards for the Annual Performance Report.

“That means we met 14 of 14 standards. We are very excited about that. Contributing factors are our parents, students, staff and faculty. They just do a great job in helping us get that and achieving that,” Shipman said.

Brashear also started a new program during “Tiger Time.” Students from all grades will get together to work on homework, complete team building exercises, and participate in other school activities.

Outside of academics the schools sports teams are in full swing as well, including a number of games scheduled heading into this weekend.