TIFTON, Ga. — The Tift County Board of Education listened to a presentation about school uniforms at Omega Elementary School at the Tuesday meeting.

Omega Elementary Principal Dr. Victoria Melton gave the presentation to the board.

The local school governance team has surveyed teachers and parents and has gotten a positive response from those. Melton said that while the students were evenly split on the issue, the surveys from faculty, staff and parents were leaning positive.

The team will be voting on the proposal at their next meeting, and School Superintendent Patrick Atwater said they feel the vote will be for instituting uniforms.

The reason Melton is presenting the proposal to the board is because there is the possibility of other schools moving towards school uniforms. According to Melton, there should be consistency between schools and the board would need to approve a uniform that would work with any of the school that choose to move towards uniforms.

The board has the authority to change the dress code for the entire school system.

Melton said that moving towards uniforms will be more cost efficient for parents, decrease discipline referrals for dress code and bullying, improve punctuality, build self esteem and make them feel like they are a part of the school community.

If approved, the change to uniforms will take effect beginning fall 2017.

Stacey Beckham was recognized for being awarded the communications and public relations award for her work with the Board of Education at the 2017 Georgia School’s Public Relations Association annual conference.

Omega Elementary was also recognized at a high progress school for 2016-2017 by the Georgia Department of Education.

A high progress school is defined as being among the top 10 percent of schools in the state in making the most progress and improving the performance of all students over three years on assessments.

“We are one team with one goal, and that is student success,” said Omega Elementary Principal Dr. Victoria Melton.

Len Lastinger Primary School Principal Richard Fisher presented the school’s improvement plan.

The board moved fundraisers, trip requests and surplus items to the consent agenda and heard a report from the property committee meeting which took place on March 2.

The committee looked at the school district rezoning for the 2019 school year. They began looking at data gathered and how the rezoning will affect teacher relocation, needed classroom materials, bus routing, athletic plans and food and nutrition staff relocation.

Plans for how to address all of these issues will be under discussion over the next few years.

School Superintendent Patrick Atwater informed the board about a meeting in Atlanta March 8 with the state to address concerns and questions about the consolidation of federal, state and local funds that has been proposed, as well as a training about the consolidation that officials from other schools will be attending.

“There are still a lot of questions,” Atwater said, “but still at this point there will be a lot of benefit for Tift County School system in the areas of flexibility.”

Atwater requested permission for several school employees to attend the training and bring back information which will then be reported to the board.

Robbie Dasher, director of operations, updated the board on the progress of SPLOST projects.

The Charles Spencer Elementary School renovation is complete, as is the high school track resurfacing.

The high school expansion and renovation project is still continuing to move forward.

They are still waiting to start the auxiliary gym, but Dasher said that it will only be about a month behind schedule.

The Georgia School Board Association legislative position, delegate and alternate delegate positions to represent Tift County will be under consideration until the deadline of April 14.

Director of Finance Klinton Guess presented a resolution for issuing general obligation bonds to the tune of $8.9 million.

These bonds will be raising capitol to complete the high school project, and according to Guess acts like a line of credit. The school would only pull from it if needed.

Guess said that if this resolution is approved he would go in front of the county commissioners and ask them to levy a tax to secure the bonds.

Allocating charter system funds to local school governance teams for the first time was brought up for discussion by the board by Atwater.

Tift County received almost $700,000 for this year, and Atwater said they were expecting more to be awarded next year.

The Board has the option to allocate anywhere from 10 percent to forty precent to the local school governance teams, and will be reviewing the different options to see what would work best.

Atwater said that this is the first time these funds will be allocated, and that it is extremely flexible and can be changed from year to year by the board.