County schools to hire academic coaches

♦ The city school board will discuss use of its CARES Act funding tonight.

Floyd County Schools is looking at using their CARES Act funds to hire interventionists and education coaches to better aid their students and teachers in the classroom.

Interventionists and coaches meet with students and teachers in either small groups or one-on-one to provide instruction and advice to help the students reach their grade level standards and catch up.

Since the pandemic started, the school system has been seeing many students struggle. Superintendent Glenn White said they have seen an overall decline in performance with students who are doing virtual school only.

“In my opinion, there is no substitute for quality faceto-face teacher instruction,” he said.

If a student continues to perform poorly, White said they won’t have the option to do virtual school in the 2021-2022 school year.

At the beginning of next school year, the interventionists will be in kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms, primarily working with students in small groups.

At the same time, the coaches will be working with teachers on their instruction in grades six through 12.

“The intent of using these interventionists and coaches is to catch these students up and get them on grade level as far as mastering the standards,” White said.

The school board approved the new jobs at their Monday board work session, deciding to use their $9 million worth of CARES Act funding for nine math interventionists, nine English language arts interventionists and four coaches.

With these new employees, the school system will go into a five-year-plan to recover from the toll of the pandemic.

“We’re planning on this being long term as far as academic achievement, getting them caught up, making sure they’re ready to graduate high school and moving on to the next grade,” White said. “All of this is about what we can do to help our students receive a good education and learn more.”

City schools set work session

The Rome City Schools board will be having their own work session Tuesday evening to discuss CARES Act funding, vaccines and other topics.

Superintendent Lou Byars said they wanted time to more deeply discuss these items before their March 9 meeting.

The meeting will start at 5 p.m. and take place in the board room of the administrative offices at 508 E. Second St.