School board gives OK to field trips in work session

Polk School District students will be learning everywhere from Perry to Savannah thanks to the board of education approving several new field trips across various schools.

While many won’t be happening until later in the year, early trip approval is fundamental for raising the required funds and awareness.

“These are getting later in the year, but they like to go ahead and get these approved so they can go ahead and start raising money,” superintendent Lauri Atkins said.

The board’s approval meant the Rockmart High School thespians were allowed to visit the Sept. 7 and 8 leadership conference and the Rockmart, and Cedartown High auto departments will soon be allowed to visit the UTI and NTI colleges on Sept. 13 and 14.

Later field trips include the Rockmart High Ag department’s participation in the Perry fair October livestock show, Rockmart Middle School’s participation in the November Beta Club Competition, Cedartown High’s participation at the February Thespians conference, West Side Elementary’s gifted PEP field trip to the Georgia Aquarium later in March, and Van Wert Elementary’s gifted PEP trip to the aquarium shortly afterwards.

Learning in the class should be easier with the board formally editing the retest policy for clarity and ease of understanding.

Highlighted in the document is the portion that states those who choose not to use the policy for either quarter will find their lowest test grade dropped at the end of the semester.

So, those who score well

well on all of their tests and don’t need to retake can still benefit from the rule.

“We’re updating the portion at the end to change the name from

‘Move on When Ready’ to ‘Dual Enrollment’ because the state has gone back to ‘Dual Enrollment,’” Atkins said at a previous meeting. “And just clarifying some of the pieces for retesting throughout the year. It needed to be a little more specific.”

The board has another regular session scheduled

for Sept. 11 after press time, before moving into a special combined work and regular session on Oct. 2 because of fall break.

The usual routine matters will be covered, but the group has planned a merit award ceremony to recognize the various achievements of its servers.

/ Sean Williams Polk County Board of Education members gathered for their Sept. 4 work session, and were set to be back in session again on Tuesday after press time.