No School October 18-19
There will be no school October 18-19 in Dallas County Schools. Parent teacher conferences are schedule Thursday, October 18, 2018 from 9 a.m.-12 p.m., 1-5 p.m., 6-8 p.m.  Buildings will be closed for meal times.

Parent Teacher Conferences October 18
Parent teacher conferences are scheduled for Thursday, October 18, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., 1-5 p.m., 6-8 p.m.  At Mallory Elementary, teachers have sent out a preference sheet with each student asking for conference times. The teachers will send home a follow up note verifying the time. If you have not received the verification by Monday afternoon please contact the teacher.
At Buffalo Prairie Middle School, you may come at your convenience. 7th and 8th grade teachers will be located in the gym and 5th and 6th grade teachers will be in their classrooms.
At Buffalo High School and the Dallas County Technical Center, parents may come at their convenience, unless a teacher has scheduled a specific time. Teachers will be in their classrooms.
There will be no school Thursday, October 18 and Friday, October 19 in Dallas County Schools.

Miles for Smiles
The Miles for Smiles mobile dental clinic will be visiting Mallory Elementary and Buffalo Prairie Middle School on the following dates: November 7^th through November 16th.  This program is available to students who fall into one of these categories of dental coverage: Have Medicaid, Missouri care, home state, and United Health care Medicaid; Private insurance; are uninsured (they have a sliding fee scale available upon request);They can arrange for private pay patients as well.  Miles for Smiles is operated by a professional staff. They provide onsite dental services to eligible children in 32 schools in an eight county area of Southwest Missouri.  Students who qualify will be given an initial exam during the school day.  Dental treatment will be provided as determined by the examining dentist.  Details of the exam and care given will be available for parents to keep for their records.  If you are interested in this program for your student, please contact the school nurse at 345-5702 for the patient information form.  When filling out the form, make sure you complete all information, front and back, which includes a consent and agreement statement that must be filled out and signed by the parent/guardian. Then please put the form in the mail to Miles for Smiles. No stamp needed. If you have any questions please call the mobile unit coordinator Kelly at 417-328-6730.

DCR1 Conducts Ballot Feasibility Surveys of Voters, Parents, Community Members, Staff
On October 10th the Dallas County R-I School District will begin a set of surveys to investigate running a ballot issue in April of 2019 to be able to build a new Agriculture/Technical Center. The school district has contracted with Patron Insight for the second year in a row.  Patron Insight is a company that conducts surveys for school districts and other government entities. They guarantee their surveys are statistically accurate within 5%; however, many school districts who have used their services state their accuracy is usually within 2% of their actual ballot issue results.

This survey process will consist of 4 different parts.  The most accurate portion of the surveys is the phone survey.  Patron Insight will contact a set percentage of voters who reside in multiple regions of the school district.  Voters can choose not to answer the questions and the company will continue surveying other voters until they have reached their targeted number of phone survey responses.  A complete phone survey usually takes 10-15 minutes of a voter’s time.

The survey contractor will also analyze the data from three separate online surveys.  The staff survey will be sent out to all current DCR1 staff members. The parent survey will be sent to all current parents or guardians of students in the district.  In addition, there will be a community survey that will be available on the district’s website at bisonpride.org. All surveys will begin on October 10th and will be close on October 30th.

After the survey’s have closed, Patron Insight will begin analyzing the data and is hoping to get the results to the district by early December.  This timeline will allow the district to make a decision on the feasibility of an April 2019 ballot issue at their regular December board meeting.  These surveys will allow the district to have an accurate picture of whether the voters are in favor of increasing property taxes to be able to build a new Agriculture/Technical Center on the High School Campus.