The Oklahoma State Board of Education approved a one-year suspension of the Oklahoma School Report Card letter grades for the 2020-21 school year. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister said the move is necessary in light of the significant disruptions in instruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Holdenville Public School Superintendent, Randy Davenport told The News, “As of now there will be no report card for this year due to the pandemic. That could change at any time but that’s the case as of now. That being said, we don’t believe that these report cards are a true picture of what our students have accomplished or where we are as school system. There is a much bigger picture to what we do in public education. What we do and how they’ve grown simply can’t be measured simply by single letter grade.”

Although the number of positive COVID-19 cases continues to rise in Oklahoma, a new vaccine is now being distributed and offers a ray of hope in the battle against the virus. The Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) has added an ongoing report on the vaccine to their website.

MRS. STORY’S CLASS - Piper Robinson, Raden Tillery, Dru Smith, and Hollis Armstrong MRS.

A special thank you to my dear friend Ima Lee Lankford for identifying The Teachers Class Record Book that Charla Garner recently found. We recognized a few of the names but did not know where they went to school. Ima Lee called to tell us that they went to Moss School and the teacher was Buster Brooks. She said he was an outstanding teacher.

This will be the last issue of the newspaper in 2020 and I am sure most of you will join me in being glad to see it go. Lots of good things have been hidden by the virus epidemic but the damage done to our nation as a whole will be felt for a long time.

Christmas is the greatest time of the year. In 1938 my parents moved us (Mom, Dad, Gerald, and me) from Allen to a town called Centrahoma. There I met Letha Mae. It was there I started paying attention to Christmas. But like some other materialistic folk my age over there, I was really concerned with the season for Christmas gifts. Santa Claus became a big mysterious person of interest.

We were in a hurry to get to the upper pasture, the highest point on the farm. This was only the second time we had ever been out to the farm at this time of day….dusk. It felt a little scary, but we wanted to see the star!

JANUARY 7, 1930 HIGH SCHOOL BLDG. BURNED TUESDAY MORNING Plans for the rebuilding of the Holdenville High School building which was destroyed by fire early Tuesday morning are being worked out, Aubrey White, member of the Board of Education from the 4 th ward, stated early Thursday morning.

Hughes County has received its first round of COVID-19 vaccines, with more expected in the near future. Holdenville General Hospital (HGH) received 42 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, December 17. Because of their extremely valuable importance in the fight against this virus, the health care workers on the front line were the first to receive these doses. This included the HGH staff as well as Hughes County EMS workers. It is important that these caretakers are able to remain on the job without contracting the virus themselves.

On Tuesday, December 22 at 2:30 a.m. a Holdenville police officer came upon a single car accident on Rogers Drive near Pizza Hut which led to the seizure of 95 grams of suspected methamphetamine, cash, several items of drug paraphernalia and a firearm. The estimated street value of the meth is more than $9,000 making it the largest drug bust of 2020 for the Holdenville Police Department.