Dear Colleagues:

Recognizing that not all of you have the opportunity to access our School Board meetings, I’d like to report on the significant actions at each meeting that may impact you. At their meeting this past Thursday, December 14, the School Board made three such decisions.

Earlier this year, we engaged an international education consulting firm to advise us on the most effective solutions for addressing our high school space requirements, while also supporting the changes we are making to our high school curriculum, which we call High School 2022.

The Board voted to proceed with the consultant’s recommendations, which call for a student center to be opened in August of 2021, instead of building a fourth comprehensive high school. The center would accommodate up to 600 students and be open to any student in the county. It will offer the opportunities for students to design their own course of studies work collaboratively with their peers on joint projects and have more interaction with community and business partners for work-based and community-based learning. Additional centers could be added in the future. With the approval of the center model, we now have a lot of exciting work ahead of us to determine the program(s) that will be housed there as well as the design of the facility.

The Board agreed to another recommendation—the modernization of our three comprehensive high schools as part of the significant improvements we are making to better prepare our high school students for success in college and careers in today’s challenging competitive markets.

For more information, view the High School Facilities Planning Study Final Report. (Note: This is a large PDF file and may take a little time to load.)

For more information on the progress of our High School 2022 work, please visit our High School 2022 website.

Also at the meeting, the Board approved a two-year pilot program to offer transportation to all high school students who will be attending one of our academies next year. Currently, students must provide their own transportation if they are attending an academy not located at their base school. For more information on how we are expanding these opportunities, please read our December 15 news release.

Finally, the School Board received Superintendent Moran’s recommendation for the redistricting of urban ring elementary school students that may take effect when Woodbrook opens its new addition next August. The Superintendent followed the recommendations of the citizen advisory committee that included parents from the affected schools: Agnor-Hurt, Greer and Woodbrook elementary schools, and Burley and Jouett middle schools. The School Board will hold a public hearing on the proposal during their January 11 meeting. For more information on the recommendations and the work of the committee, please visit the Redistricting: Current Project web page.

School Board meeting agenda are posted on our ElectronicSchoolBoard site the Friday before an upcoming Board meeting. The next Board meeting will be held on Thursday, January 11.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

Dr. Matthew Haas
Deputy Superintendent