What a great week for Crawford County Schools!

Monday started with the excitement of watching our CCMS Lady Eagles softball team win back to back District Regional Championships.  These young ladies are a joy to watch and represent the school and the system respectfully.

On Wednesday, some administrators and registrars were trained by Infinite Campus personnel on the new call out system.  For those who are not aware, Crawford County School System migrated into a new Student Information System (SIS) called Infinite Campus.  Our call list should now be as up to date as the information that is provided to us.  Parents, just to let you know, the new parent portal is being created as we speak.  We are hoping to roll it out within the month.

Thursday we had a trio of winners within the system.  David Goodman won 4 Falcons tickets at CCHS just for eating school breakfast!!!! To celebrate our new breakfast cart, we gave out tickets to every student who ate breakfast last Thursday through this Wednesday. Students put tickets in the bucket for Thursday’s drawing and David was the lucky winner! These tickets were donated by Alicia Page and the Southeast United Dairy Industry Association. Thank you Alicia for this great prize!  The second pair of winners were Aaron Oliver and Abigail Henry our 2018 REACH Scholars. REACH Georgia is the State of Georgia’s first needs-based mentorship and college scholarship program. The mission is to ensure that Georgia’s academically promising students have the academic, social, and financial support needed to graduate from high school, access college, and achieve postsecondary success. Beginning in the 8th grade and through high school, REACH Scholars are paired with a mentor and an academic coach.  Scholars must maintain good grades (2.5 GPA), behavior and attendance. Scholars who successfully complete the program and graduate from high school are awarded a $10,000 scholarship ($2,500/year) that can be used at a University System of Georgia, Technical College System of Georgia, or eligible private postsecondary institution. The scholarship is in addition to any other grant or scholarship the student receives.  There was  a signing ceremony at the BOE auditorium for them Thursday night October 5th.

The CCHS 4 year graduation rate for 2017 was announced recently.  CCHS went from a 70.313% grad rate in 2016 to a 79.487% grad rate in 2017.  That is a 9.174% increase.  We are still slightly below the state but that gap is greatly reduced.  

Upcoming PL for our faculty:  We have two days of Professional Learning scheduled next week on October 10th and 11th.  One day will be dedicated to vertical alignment across our system.  We are the perfect size for our teachers at every grade level to talk to the grade below and the grade above to insure our students do not have holes in their education.  In other words, teachers will know what is expected the next year and they will know what the previous teachers have covered.  What an awesome concept!

Excellent Teachers - Excellent Administrators - Excellent Schools

Welcome Back FY 18

As summer winds down and Crawford County Schools’ staff and students are preparing to return, I can’t say that I am sad.  I enjoy a quick break but after the July 4th holiday I get a little antsy and ready for a schedule to return.  I also want to apologize for my lack of “blogging” after Christmas Break last school year.  I have no good excuse, just know that this blog will be a priority this year.  I believe that it is a way to tell the positive story of our school and I will be committed to frequent posts.

We have some exciting things coming this year with our leaders.  We will be continuing the A-TEAM meetings monthly, but the design will be slightly modified.  We will meet once a month and analyse at real life Crawford County data.  This will give our administrative team and academic coaches a chance to use the plethora of data that we gather to improve student achievement.  Gathering data just to gather is worthless, teachers and school administrators must be able to use this data to drive instruction and channel resources.  In addition to the monthly meetings, a portion of our leadership team will be attending the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI) basecamp and leadership summit.  GLISI is an independent, non-profit organization that is committed to working with district and school leaders to build leadership capacity, improve organizational effectiveness, and create conditions that improve student achievement. We partner with education leaders in Georgia and across the nation to drive positive change in their districts and schools through performance-based leadership development, district consulting, and research, drawing on best practice in K-12 education, business, and adult learning.

Crawford County has added an assistant principal to assist at Crawford County Elementary.  This will allow a more direct focus on curriculum and instruction which is sure to increase student achievement.  With student achievement  at the forefront, students at both Crawford County Middle School and Crawford County High School will be allowed to take higher rigor courses.  CCMS students will have the opportunity to get some high school credits in the 8th grade and CCHS students will get 2 more AP opportunities this year.  All of these efforts are an attempt to increase student achievement throughout Crawford County Schools.  This is the first strategic goal in our strategic waiver school system contract with the state.

Important Dates:

July 31, 2017 New Teacher Orientation

August 1, 2017 Faculty Returns

August 8, 2017 Open House

August 11, 2017 Student’s First Day!!!

Excellent Teachers - Excellent Leaders - Excellent Schools

Legislation and Honors

Good Monday morning!

First of all,  let me apologize for the length of time between my last BLOG and this installment.  I have been watching the Legislature to see if there was a “Plan B” bill dropped as an alternative to the Opportunity School District Amendment that was voted down in November.  Well, last Thursday on February 9th, HB 338 was dropped.  To read the bill in its’ entirety please click here. If you don’t want to spend the time to read through the Therefores and the Thou shalts, I have added a summary below:

• A Chief Turnaround Officer (CTO) would be appointed by the State Board and report directly to them.
• The CTO will recommend personnel to serve as turnaround coaches for State Board approval.  The coaches will assist schools identified as in the greatest need of help with ongoing assistance and input.
• Coaches will be assigned to one or more schools and shall assist in creating local collaborations to address personal and community conditions impacting student achievement.
• The schools will be identified based on the number of years they have received "an unacceptable rating and any other factors deemed appropriate by the Chief Turnaround Officer."
• Local boards can amend their flexibility contracts to agree to receive assistance from the state.  Otherwise, the State Board has up to 60 days to implement one or more of the interventions in current law.
• Local boards that have no flexibility contract can sign an intervention contract to agree to receive assistance or the State Board will immediately implement one or more of the interventions in current law.
• Within 90 days of entering into the contract, a turnaround coach, RESA personnel, and possibly a third party provider shall conduct a comprehensive evaluation, make recommendations, and help develop an intensive school improvement plan.
• After 2 years, if the school is not improving, there are ten possible interventions including continuing the implementation of the plan.
• Before the implementation of any intervention, the local board can request a hearing before the State Board to show why the proposed intervention should not be implemented or that an alternative is better.
• An Education Turnaround Advisory Council would report to the State Board their recommendations on the qualifications and method of identifying and selecting the CTO.  They could also submit names of potential candidates for CTO and turnaround coaches. The Council would be made up of the executive directors or their designee(s) of GSBA, GSSA, PAGE, GAE, and the President of Georgia PTA.
• A Joint Study Committee on the Establishment of a State Accreditation Process is also created in the bill.  The Committee shall also consider the possibility of establishing a school board review commission.
• After five or more consecutive years of one-half or more of a district's schools receiving an unacceptable rating, the school board can be removed using the same procedures as are currently in place using the accreditation status as the trigger.  If the local board is under a contract amendment or intervention contract and is in substantial compliance with the contract, this is stayed.

One of the major concerns is the creation of a Chief Turnaround Officer (CTO) who will not answer to the elected State School Superintendent, instead, the CTO will answer to the Governors appointed State School Board.   There is not enough mention of collaboration between the GaDOE and the CTO.  And lastly, everyone needs to know more about how this plan is funded.

Last night at our Board Meeting we honored a couple of groups.  First, congrats to the CCMS Boys’ Basketball team for the Conference Championship.  CCMS has now won both Girls’ Fastpitch and Boys’ Basketball Conference Championships. The second group to be honored were the CCHS Honor Graduates listed below:

Ashley Avila

Erica Barbour

Jordan-Lee Harris

Zaccaria Jordan

Kacey Smith

Quitamyen Frye

Geneara Corbin

Rayesa Shannon

Mark Hogan

KaShawn Baker

Emily Castrovillari

Timothy Bechtel

Shawn Johnson

Harlisa Lockett  (STAR student)

Zachary Woods (Salutatorian)

Emily Baucom (Valedictorian)

I would also like to honor Mrs. Agnes Hollingshed for being named STAR Teacher.

I appreciate all the hard work the staff and administration is putting into assuring student needs are met.