OUTLOOK FOR CHICKAMAUGA CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
Two Thousand Twenty Two is off to a busy start for the Chickamauga City School District. Not only are students, faculty, and staff navigating face-to-face instruction in the world of COVID-19, the district will also undergo a critical review to renew its Accreditation with Cognia, an agency with over 125 years experience in accrediting quality institutions. This is not about passing an inspection every 5 years, it is about a process that holds the district responsible for having a growth mindset. It forces districts to establish shared goals and build on the institution’s strengths. The review will be held February 22-24, 2022, and will begin with an engagement review—this is typically an on-site visit by a highly trained team of educators and administrators from across the country. Due to COVID, this evaluation review will be performed virtually, and the district has already submitted an in-depth document outlining the processes in place in the Chickamauga City School District, including the continuous improvement cycle utilized in each school and the district.
The visiting team gathers evidence about the quality of our learning environment, our priorities, they track progress of improvement efforts, and provide research-based performance standards that provide a framework to achieve measurable, meaningful improvement. After a thorough review, the evaluating team will provide a comprehensive report that gives both a broad understanding and detailed insights as to where our district excels and where we need to focus.
Accreditation is the launchpad for school improvement. This process probes the entire institution—from policies, to learning conditions and cultural context, to determining how well the parts work together to meet the needs of every learner. educational institutions, we will also grow our learners, teachers, leaders, and organization. We want to improve in all aspects of our work to better serve students.
One important way to improve faculty and staff is ongoing training. The Chickamauga City School District has a policy that requires professional development for all employees. We believe it is essential that we all continue to learn and improve our abilities and practices in order to provide the highest quality education possible. As a result each school has developed professional learning communities which are small groups of educators that meet regularly, share expertise, and work collaboratively to improve teaching skills and the academic
lesson designs, and assessment practices, while administrators are able to address leadership questions, strategies and issues.
Many common activities that may take place in a professional learning community are:
• Discussing teacher work: Reviewing lesson plans or assessments then offering critical feedback and recommendations for improvement.
• Discussing student work: Teachers analyze student performance data to identify trends, and collaboratively develop pro-active teaching and support strategies to help students who may be struggling academically. • Discussing professional literature: Teachers and administrators select a text to read (i.e., a research study or a text on a specialized instructional technique…) and then engage in a structured conversation about the text and how it can improve their teaching.
Professional learning communities are in place and meet be extremely helpful in reducing professional isolation, fostering greater faculty collaboration, and spreading the expertise and insights of individual teachers throughout school.
Another area of study we are focusing on this year is STEM classes. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. We began a STEM club at Chickamauga Elementary this school year and the future is very bright for the competition teams who are currently ranked #1 and #4 in the state of Georgia.
Next year, the State Department of Education has mandated Computer Science be taught in middle and high schools. If the state does not change the implementation date, we will be adding a computer science course at both GLMS and GLHS which we will expand and phase into a complete CTAE pathway at GLHS.
STEM coursework is rigorous and has a heavy technical knowledge and mastery of each individual discipline.
COVID-19 has made a tremendous impact on school attendance. The Chickamauga City School
District has followed the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Department of
Public Health (DPH) from the on-set of COVID-19 in 2020. It has been extremely challenging to keep our schools open for face-to-face instruction, but with very few exceptions, we have been successful. The extra schools remaining open for instruction. Frequent cleaning throughout the school day and electrostatic sanitizing are now embedded in our operations and has proven extremely effective in minimizing the spread of COVID in our schools. Our custodial staffs are truly heroes!!
Our teachers and administrators have also been tremendous when it comes to social distancing and implementing protocols for lunch, transition, and the classroom. By identifying close contacts and following quaranting guidelines, we have limited the spread of the virus. When it was necessary for students to be absent, virtual instruction was provided by the teachers and learning loss was minimized by providing academic support for students. Each school has procedures in place to offer remediation/acceleration within the school day. At Chickamauga Elementary it is TEAM time. At Gordon Lee Middle School it is WIN time. At Gordon Lee High School academic assistance is offered as needed before and after school. They were so successful last summer we have decided that in the summer of 2022, we will again offer Academic Fun Camps for our students to reinforce and enhance academic skills. We have been pleased with our students’ performance throughout the pandemic, and rather than seeing great losses in performance, we have actually seen growth in some areas. We are blessed master the state standards. remain in Double A, the schools in our region are a great distance away, requiring students to leave school early for every away game, for every sport but football. Not only would students miss valuable class time, they would also be subjected to extremely long bus rides to and from competitions which is a safety issue. Due to these concerns, the district appealed to move as Single A along with Trion and other schools our size, but we will make
Trojans on, and we encourage you to visit our website for more information on our district and activities (www.chickamaugacityschools.org).
Melody Day, Superintendent