Franklin Co. BOE To Meet Saturday

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR Radio, Lavonia

Franklin County’s School Board will be meeting Saturday for a work session retreat and among the issues the board plans to discuss is the recent release of the State’s College and Career Readiness Performance Index or CCRPI.

The CCRPI is Georgia’s statewide accountability system. Implemented in 2012, it measures schools and school districts on an easy-to-understand 100-point scale, helping parents and the public better understand how schools are performing.

It also provides a more comprehensive picture of student achievement overall than the pass/fail system previously in place under AYP.

For Franklin County schools overall, the rate has gone up and then came down, following a trend seen in schools systems statewide.

In 2012, Franklin County’s CCRPI rate for all schools was 74.9. In 2013, it rose to 79 district wide, but dropped in 2014 to 75.3.

School Superintendent Dr. Ruth O’Dell said Wednesday, some students in certain subgroups in Franklin County did not do as well as their counterparts across the state.

“The area I’m most concerned about are the lower-achieving students are not performing as well as the lower achieving students across the state,” she said. “We are making progress, but we’re not making enough progress with those students.”

O’Dell said another group of students the system needs to concentrate their efforts on is the higher achieving students.

“A lot of our higher achieving students are not progressing compared to themselves,” she said. “So this is going to be a process of working with students so they understand and develop a mindset that they can do better and they don’t have to settle.”

O’Dell said high achievers tend to be very invested in the fact that they are high achievers.

“So therefore, they don’t want to take a lot of chances. They don’t want to take a chance on doing what is harder because they don’t want to ruin their reputation as high achievers,” she said.

Still, Dr. O’Dell said she is pleased with how the school system has scored on the CCRPI overall.

In addition to Saturday’s retreat, O’Dell said she is planning another “war room” session with top administrators tomorrow.

“Friday, our district leadership is coming together, which is principals, assistant principals and our leadership in the administrative office and we will have a war room session in the morning to really dig down and begin looking at how we can improve our CCRPI scores and begin planning,” O’Dell said.

O’Dell said working to come up with improvements in the CCRPI scores will also impact the school system’s budget, which the board will soon begin working for the next fiscal year.