Lowndes Schools discuss awards, results, and new communication platform

Caison Kirkland, The Valdosta Daily Times, Ga.
·3 min read

Feb. 6—VALDOSTA — The Georgia Association of Educational Leaders recognized the Lowndes County School District with the GAEL Vision Award during the GAEL Winter Conference in Athens Jan. 28.

Lowndes County School Superintendent Sandra Wilcher announced the award during the county Board of Education's work session Feb. 5 at Dewar Elementary School.

The GAEL Vision Award recognizes systems and organizations that use GAEL's institutional membership opportunity, Wilcher said. GAEL calls the award the "Vision" Award because the organization wants to recognize the vision of these systems who see the need and opportunity for their leadership teams to be involved as one voice for public education in their statewide professional association.

Also during the work session, school district officials presented the BOE members with the most recent results of the district's internal benchmarking system, the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), that provides teachers with levels of student mastery of standards in relation to grade-level expectations based on the overall results of 12,210,000 students country-wide. Although an assessment that students take using an online platform, the MAP benchmark tests in math, reading, and science provide teachers with individual student results that identify which standards students are ready to master next.

The results also allow teachers to quickly identify skills or standards that students may be struggling with so that remediation and intervention may occur as soon as possible, school officials said. The MAP assessment is given three times a year. Previously, the district used Renaissance Star and the Georgia Department of Education BEACON assessments, but once MAP is fully implemented, the students will experience fewer assessments per year, they said.

Dr. Rodney Green, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, mentioned that teacher buy-in the past has been low due to student apathy and low motivation towards assessments. Still, this year, the results are up. Overall, the district's mid-year benchmark results show increased percentages of students meeting their growth potential. Specifically, Lowndes County School students showed significant growth in comparison to comparable counties.

The MAP assessment also provides predictions as to the level of mastery students will achieve on the End of Grade Georgia Milestone Assessments that are required each year by the Georgia Department of Education in grades 3-8 and the End of Course Assessments in specific high school classes. This information informs the instruction that teachers plan for their students throughout the year to help students be successful on these high-stakes tests.

District leaders also shared a possible change in vendors who provide the communication platform the system uses to communicate with students, parents, and employees. Currently, the district uses the REMIND and SchoolMessenger communication platforms to send messages to families through reminders or announcements. A different program, Apptegy, may provide a better and more reliable way to communicate in the school system, district officials said. Apptegy would deliver a more straightforward onboarding process without worrying about throttling the number of messages sent, they said.

Additionally, District 1 Board Member Fred Wetherington proposed the consideration of adding a holiday in honor of Veterans Day each year to the school calendar.

The Lowndes County School Board utilizes work sessions to learn about recent student achievement and possible needs across the district. The next regular board meeting will be 6 p.m. Feb. 12 at the Lowndes County Board of Education, 1592 Norman Drive, Valdosta. Work sessions rotate to different schools each month. The next work session will be 6 p.m. March 4 at Lowndes Middle School.