Dear Editor,
It is an election year.
Three seats on the Greene County Board of Education (BOE) are being contested. Candidates representing LOA’s specific interests, and their followers would like you to believe Greene County Schools are broken, and that the BOE is ineffective. The facts do not support those politics. Here are some examples.
• Major decisions and commitments in the schools are made within a five-year strategic plan approved unanimously by the BOE and the Superintendent in 2023.
• The new elementary school is a key component of that plan and is being built with no increase in the mill rate.
• In fact, the current BOE has reduced the mill rate every year since 2018.
• The LOA Lawsuit has been settled and the LOA Charter renewal has been finalized.
• The Greene College and Career Academy has grown each year and has been expanded to include some 8th-grade students, students from LOA, Nathanael Greene Academy, and Home School Students. Over 130 community leaders are engaged as Career Coaches. This success has been recognized for innovation by Emory University’s Executive MBA Program and the Karl Vincent Institute at the University of Georgia.
• The BOE has developed effective working relationships with community resources that enhance the learning experience of our children, including ATLAS, The Boys and Girls Club, the Victory Train, Ferst Readers, and the Thillen Education Foundation.
• The BOE has put in place the support staff to meet the special education and emotional needs of our diverse student population. Recent College and Career Readiness (CCRPI) assessments showed dramatic improvement for this group of students, better than the state averages.
• The Greene County School System has been recognized by the State of Georgia DOE for excellence in accounting practices.
• The BOE has been recognized for excellence by the Georgia School Board Association and is now seen as “An Exemplary School Board.”
• The Georgia DOE has recognized the Greene County Primary School for milestone testing Improvements over the past two years. According to the Georgia Public School Foundation, the Greene Primary School has improved CCRPI scores to 88.2%, a 28.5% improvement since 2019, and 3rd grade reading is at 72% vs. a National average of 32%.
• The Greene County High School graduation rate has improved to 86%, better than the state average, and has improved their CCRPI scores by 7.4% since 2019.
• The turnover rates for teachers have improved dramatically over the past 3 years and are now better than the state average. Nine (9) teachers at Greene County High School have been certified “Adjunct Professors” by Athens Technical College. The Georgia School Board Association recently highlighted Greene County for exemplary teacher retention programs.
The BOE and the Superintendent are working as an effective team. Disrupting that team now would undermine the real progress being made in Greene County Schools. Let’s keep moving forward!
Vote FOR Dr. Perry Lee, BOE Chair; Joe Bashore, BOE District 2; and Dr. Maggie Kjer, BOE District 4.
Gerry Giesler, Greensboro