Columbia County’s Board of Education met Sept. 13 with a full agenda related to the first two months of the fall semester.
Following with the approval of the Fiscal Year 2024 Capital Outlay application, which will allow for the school district to receive money from the state for further building improvements and upgrades, Superintendent Steven Flynt gave an update on the 10-year building plan as well as developments within schools.
“I’m going to start out with Columbia Middle School where we’re working towards an addition of 11 classrooms. As you can see, the work out here is really taking off, and the buildings are taking shape,” said Flynt. “The block work continues; the steel beams for the roof have already been set; and the roofing contractor is expected to be on site later this week.”
Other developments mentioned classroom additions being added to Harlem Middle and Euchee Creek Elementary School, final plans being approved for Westmont Elementary and parking lot demolition and future clearing of newly purchased property for a new North Columbia Elementary School.
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In partnership with Richmond County, Flynt also updated the board on the progress of the Junior Achievement Discovery Center which will soon have a design draft approved later in the week.
“JA of Georgia has conducted several meetings with prospective storefront sponsors, as a reminder there are 18 total sponsorable storefronts in the discovery center,” he said. “These sponsorships will fund much of the annual expenses needed to operate the discovery center once it’s up and running.”
Following the building updates, David Alalof, representative of District One, voiced his concerns regarding the recent recession and how it might affect future building projects.
“I think it’s great to have a 10-year plan and that we’re right on target with it, the only concern that I have is the economy and the hiccups we may find,” said Alalof.
After acknowledging said concerns, Flynt continued the meeting with a minor student behavior report which will go into deeper detail in the board’s next work session on Sept. 25.
“Moving onto student behavior update, at our last board meeting we discussed sharing information regarding discipline and, as you know, we’ve changed that a little bit as far as parent notification and community notification,” said Flynt. “We really believe this is a shared responsibility among especially our parents and community.”
Penny Jackson, associate superintendent, said she believes the addition of student resource officers has greatly decreased the amount of school incidents, especially those involving electronic
“Students know that we take our code of conduct violations very seriously, and they know that were going to look into, every step of the way, the investigation itself,” she said. “With our SROs being at every school they’re able to see, at times, first hand these incidents and how they occur, be able to address them, and do a report as needed. We are doing more incident reports, but this is because we are addressing these code of conduct violations by addressing them daily and we’re doing it at every level from Pre-K to twelfth.”
Jackson stressed that an incident report does not necessarily mean a criminal charge, but they are filled out to have documentation of previous incidents. She also emphasized reports about threats are also sent out to parents and the community to spark conversations between students and parents about the danger of making inappropriate and dangerous jokes.
“Oftentimes, it’s to let [parents] know there may not have been a credible threat in this case, however, talk with your students about the joking and about some of these serious code of conduct violations that can cause them to be under investigation,” she said.
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After the brief student behavior summary report, associate superintendents, Michele Sherman and Steven Cummings presented the success of Columbia County’s first official Digital Learning Day.
Previously a traditional half-day at school, Digital Learning Day is a virtual learning day for all students ages Pre-K to twelfth grade to encourage technological advancement at home under the guidance of parents.
“We want to prepare students to be able to be successful and responsible at using these tools,” said Sherman. “You’ll see that the majority of responses to the survey felt that the day was a positive learning experience which is due to all the amazing work of the people I’ve mentioned previously.”
Despite the overall success and encouragement from both teachers and parents, some parents said they had trouble with the online learning due to multiple children in the house or having to take off work to care for young students.
Sherman said parent complaints were understandable and would be acknowledged by the school board; she said the board will consider a variety of options to help concerned parents and will plan to improve Digital Learning Day before the next scheduled one occurs in March of 2023.The next regular session for the Columbia County Board of Education is scheduled for Nov. 9 at the Student Support Complex located at 4395 River Watch Parkway in Evans.
Liz Wright is a staff writer covering education and general assignments for The Augusta Press. Reach her at liz@theaugustapress.com
