It is hard to believe ten school days remain before we head into 2016. 2015 has truly gone by fast.  I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving break as we head toward the Christmas break and 2016 beyond.

 

This week I attended the Winter Conference of the Georgia School Boards Association with all five of our local school board members. Our board of education was honored as a Quality Board at the conference, a distinction shared by 31 other local boards of education.  I hope you will congratulate our board members on meeting the criteria to attain this special designation.

 

Let me highlight an important item approved at Tuesday's board meeting. The board approved my request to engage
Phi Delta Kappa to perform a curriculum audit of our school system. We last had such an audit in 1997, and the time is right to update the findings and recommendations a comprehensive audit like this can provide. A curriculum audit provides a detailed look at our teaching and learning process from the board governance/policy level through curriculum adoption/presentation/assessment to professional learning.  Alignment of our efforts is the primary goal of the audit. I expect multiple recommendations for improvement along with a series of commendations for areas where we perform well. This will require preparation in advance of the audit team, but I am convinced that will move us forward as we adopt a new strategic plan, change to Milestones assessments, and continue improving our use of Teacher Keys and Leader Keys evaluation systems. We are looking toward February or March to conduct the audit. I'll keep you updated as we move forward.