School systems focus on helping students catch up
♦ Rome adds new programs utilizing CARES Act funds for the upcoming year.
While he doesn’t know whether there will be masks or social distancing in the next school year, Rome City Schools Superintendent Lou Byars said they are primarily focusing on “potential learning loss.”
“We feel like we’ve done a great job at keeping students engaged and continue their education, whether it be virtual or in-school,” Byars said. “We still want to make sure they’re caught up and take extra steps this year to help teachers and get more students into the summer school program this year.”
To help curb any learning loss, RCS will be expanding their summer school to a four week program and making it available to more students.
“Typically, our summer school focuses on students who might’ve been detained because of the milestone assessments or because they’re failing classes, but now we’re offering it to any student who might be falling behind,” Assistant Superintendent Dawn Williams said.
“They won’t just be focusing on the reading milestones and math milestones... it’s going to be what standards they didn’t meet during the year and that expansion will be the only thing that’s different.”
The summer school expansion will be paid for using the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funds.
The board of education approved the fund allocation at their board meeting on this week as well as several other items such as:
♦ Expanding the Aspire after-school program
♦ Implementation of Saturday school for Rome Middle and High School students
♦ After school programs for Rome Middle and High Schools
♦ Adding an interventionist to both East Central and West End elementary schools
♦ Adding paraprofessionals to primary grades (kindergarten-2nd grade) school faculty (27-28 positions)
♦ Adding additional digital subscriptions
Going into the next school year, they will still offer the virtual academy, but there will only be one teacher per grade level for the entire school system.
For example, all virtual academy second graders, whether they’re at Main Elementary or West Central Elementary, will be in the same class.
This will only apply for kindergarten through eighth grade. For high schoolers, they will be enrolled in the Georgia Virtual School. Applications for the virtual academy will open Monday.
Employee housing
At the same meeting, board members approved a lease agreement with Harvey Given Company to help provide housing to any of their employees.
“Every year when we bring in new employees, especially if they’re not from this area, they struggle starting their year off and finding housing,” Byars said “Housing in this area can be very challenging.”
The board has been looking at housing issues for the past few years as part of their recruitment process.
To start off, the school system will lease four units from Midtown Alli Townhomes on Martha Berry Boulevard to their new employees and any current employees if they’re interested.
The units are all two-bedroom with electric washers and dryers and a standard kitchen.
If this is successful, the superintendent thinks they’ll expand the lease and include more units.
“This is a way for us to see if this is something teachers are interested in,” Byars said. “Their neighbors would be other teachers and they would know who they are.”