Chief Academic Officer Mickey Weldon presents the results of the AdvancEd accreditation final report to the board at the Apr. 9 meeting.

 TIFTON — The final report of the AdvancEd accreditation process for the Tift County School System was presented to the Tift County Board of Education at the Apr. 9 meeting.

Chief Academic Officer Mickey Weldon presented the final results at the meeting.

“The report itself is basically an overall review for our system,” he said. “That’s the key pieces to out accreditation for our system, which allows our students to go out of state to other institutions throughout the country.”

The school system met the criteria for accreditation.

According to Weldon, the system was scored on an Index of Education Quality, which is a 400 point scale. Tift County schools scored 295.97, which is above the 278-283 average for all of the schools in the area.

Out of 31 scored diagnostics, the system had 13 areas where they are meeting expectations and 16 areas that are improving.

There was only one area scored as needing improvement, which was having a mission statement that defines beliefs about teaching and learning. The system scored “exceeded expectations” in implementing procedures to ensure effective support of teaching and learning.

School Superintendent Adam Hathaway said that accreditation is a big deal.

“We go through it once every five years,” he said. “The fact that we’re able to keep our accreditation, keep our students moving forward and keep our community moving forward is something that we need to recognize in a very positive way. That takes a lot of hard work to be able to do all of that.”

Board approved security upgrades, renovations and modifications

The school board voted to approve contracts to complete safety and security upgrades to eight schools at a estimated cost of $215,000.

Annie Belle Clark Elementary School, Charles Spencer Elementary School, G.O. Bailey Elementary School, Len Lastinger Elementary School, Matt Wilson Elementary School, the Tift County Pre-K building and Sixth Street Academy will all have aluminum storefront walls in the reception areas to protect the front offices.

Northside Elementary School will have the same walls installed in addition to security fencing for the courtyard to protect students when they move between buildings.

Hathaway said that he was excited that the state has recognized the “extreme need for school safety issues and security.”

He said that $74,000 of the funds for this project will come from the state.

Hathaway said that this funding is not part of the estimated $30,000 each school is expected to receive from the state next year.

“We’ll be having more conversations about how we utilize that money in order to really try and make our schools as safe as we can possible make them,” he said. “Safety and security is the number one thing that we do.”

Additionally, the board approved a bid for $1,290,000 for renovations and modifications for Eighth Street Middle School.

The renovations include painting the inside of the building, replacing and painting existing tile ceilings and installing new ceiling systems in areas without them and updating lighting so that it is LED, which is less expensive to run.

Chief Operations Officer Robbie Dasher said that renovations will begin as soon as students are out for summer break and are expected to be complete before school starts in the fall.

Pre-K classes moving to elementary schools

Hathaway informed the board that the pre-Kindergarten classes will be housed in the elementary schools beginning in the fall.

He said that he has been consulting with pre-K teachers about this plan to see how it would impact teachers and students.

“As we have talked about the realignment, we have left enough space in each of the elementary buildings because the overall plan was to move the pre-Ks into those buildings too so that the younger children wouldn’t have to make as many building transitions and would have access to all the resources,” he said. “My understanding when I got here was the plan was to roll half of them out next year and then another half out the following year. As we talked with the pre-K teachers about that, their question to me was, ‘Why don’t we just all roll out at once?’”

Hathaway said that after discussing the move with the teachers, the current plan is to move the pre-K classes to each of the elementary schools beginning in the 2019-2020 school year.

“Now having said that, we are absolutely aware of that change having an impact both good and bad for parents,” he said.

He said that the school system is planning on having some open houses before the end of the school year for parents and teachers so that parents can talk with teachers and tour the school.

Hathaway said that he wants parents to be able to express concerns and ask questions.

“Hopefully we have an answer for that and if we don’t we can address that before we get into the school year,” he said. “It’s easy for me to know that a pre-K student won’t be in the bathroom with a fifth grader, but if you’re a parent and you don’t know, this is your first child and this is the first time they’re going to a school experience like that, being able to answer those questions and hopefully being able to alleviate any fears or concerns that a parent may have before we get to the summer, before it’s time to go, is very important.”