Lake Oconee news. (Greensboro, GA) 199?-current, December 11, 2015, Image 9

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Lake Oconee news., December 11, 2015, Image 9

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Newspaper Page TextFriday, December 11,2015 Lake Oconee News Page A9 UPSA Continued from A1 rently in the planning phase of the initiative. “The goals are to: share ideas about teaching and learning, moving from a culture of isolation to col laboration; focus on the district’s non-negotiable instructional practices; address and develop solu tions to improve literacy across the district; and ensure that teachers have common resources, strong lessons and the strategies they need to more effective ly teach the Common Core standards,” she said. Kilgore said he loves the idea of collaboration but would also like to look into collaborating with a school with better scores, rather than the same or lower scores. Dr. Moore said he was “all for” collaborating with LOA, but does not have the additional funds to offer a stipend, like the school system is offering for the GES, CMS and UPSA col laboration. Dr. Moore said he was not sure whether or not LOA had been invited by Greene County School System to participate in the collaboration. “We need to be holding CCA Continued from A1 ruling they had waited so long to hear: $3.3 million was awarded to them to establish the academy. The grant will allow the system to move forward with their plans to establish an in stitution that will change the landscape of education in the county. Accord ing to Morgan County High School Work-Based Learning teacher Jennifer Butler, the impact this will have on the school system will be seen K - 12 and beyond. “This is a tremendous opportunity for our county and our students,” said Madison Morgan Chamber of Commerce President Bob Hughes. “It will open career opportunities that will enable us to meet business and industry ex pectations for the work force of tomorrow. As the Economic Development Director, this Academy status will give us one more arrow in our quiver for in dustrial recruitment.” the district accountable to facilitating these sessions with LOA,” Kilgore said. “They’re not going to partic ipate if they’re not invited. “I love it; I think it’s a great idea. I’m just looking at these comparative scores and, you know, if I want to collaborate and figure out what’s working I want to be talking to (LOA).” When asked Tuesday morning, Dr. Otho Tucker, LOA CEO, said he did not know anything about collaboration between the other schools. Rhodes said LOA has not yet been invited. “The deal is, that you don’t hitch your star with someone who has much of a struggle, or worse, than you do,” UPSA Board Member Kathleen Mayers said. “If you’re going to emulate somebody, you want to try to collaborate with somebody who is doing better.” Within the school, Dr. Moore said he, along with UPSA Instructional Coach Ashlie Miller, are providing hands-on professional de velopment with the teachers for about eight weeks. He said the teachers will be instructed on how to build an effective lesson for the new assessment and Geor gia’s recent change to new learning standards. “What we found is that The process to get to the point of accepting the grant began last January with steering committee meetings, a phase that informed the team of the application process. The team then began writing the grant in the early summer, and the applica tion was officially submit ted in early September. In November a group from the Technical College System of Georgia traveled to Morgan County to discuss the application. They walked the team through each piece of the application and gave them a score for each section. On Dec. 1 the Morgan County team traveled to the TCSG headquarters in Atlanta. Once there the group dis cussed the overview of the proposal, the highlight of their proposal and their weakest criteria. Accord ing to the superintendent, their greatest challenge was the governance struc ture they were proposing. Woodard, Jabari Simama, Bob Hughes, Jennifer Butler, Jim Malanows- ki, Keith Seagers, Ashley Potter and Heather Fuller no one had ever done this with them,” Dr. Moore said. “Its an interesting challenge at the elementary level because, you know, elemen tary teachers are asked to teach every subject, and some subjects may be their strengths, and the others not be, but with all of the changes that have come down from the federal gov ernment and from the state - with standards changes and assessment changes - you have teachers trying to figure things out that have not even been properly trained on how to teach or how to build an effective lesson, so we are working with our teachers just to make sure we are providing our kids with the best in struction possible.” Dr. Moore also said the school is focusing on ad dressing the school’s literacy problem in every subject. The teachers will work to incorporate reading and writing into every lesson. The Milestones test includes writing portions in both the math and English language arts portions of the test, something that is different from the former assessment. Superintendent Philip Mellor was out of the office Tuesday and unable to respond to questions by press time. He directed ques tions to Rhodes. presented, while a team from the schools, technical college and business repre sentatives traveled to show their support. “This grant will be truly transformational,” said Morgan County High School Principal Dr. Jim Malanowski. “It’s the be ginning of an even greater collaboration between the businesses, citizens, parents, students and schools of Morgan County. Our work has just begun.” According to Dr. Woodard, the next step is to begin designing the building and set up the in frastructure to support the career academy. Morgan County was the only (single-district) school to earn the grant for the college and career academy, meaning itsCCA will only serve students in the Morgan County system. Woodard went on to say they are on time with where they need to be at this point and that the awarding of the grant is a big piece of the plan to be successful with a new career academy building. During this holiday season we want to say Kuutfe you to our customers. Your business is very valuable to us and we appreciate your loyalty, trust and friendship. JIM BOYD & l ASSOCIATES INSURANCE S. BONDS 120 E Washington St • Madison, Ga 30650 • 706-342-2411 JimBoydAgency.com Contributed Union Point City Attorney Joe Reitman says the city maintains that it pays more than its fair share of the 911 costs. 911 Continued from A1 The dispute has been going on for almost six months. In June, the Greene County Commis sion decided to require Union Point to enter into an “Intergovernmental Agree ment” for 911 services at a cost of $40,000 per year. At the time, County Manager Byron Lombard said that the city of Greensboro was paying the county $60,000 annually as part of a similar agreement. Services include receiv ing and dispatching to city police any emergency and non-emergency calls. Also, the county provides ad ministrative functions that include handling all inqui ries such as background checks, stolen articles and missing persons. City police use the county’s radio system for communica tions. Right now, Union Point does not have such an agreement with the county and, according to Greene County, the city pays nothing for the 911 services. Union Point City Attorney Joe Reitman says the city maintains that it pays more than its fair share of 911 costs. He says its citizens pay county ad valorem taxes and the $1.50 per month 911 fee on their phone bill that goes to the county. Reitman says Union Point residents pay county taxes for some services they never receive, such as “Sheriffs patrol,” and the city’s police and fire departments handle calls in Greene County that are outside the city limits. The county wanted the agreement to be signed by October 1, 2015. However, a combination of legal action by Union Point and the county’s willingness to maintain the status quo, while working out an agree ment, has prevented any cuts in 911 service. But on Dec. 1, the county commission drew a line in the sand. A letter from Commis sion Chairman Ed Bullard warned that if there is no agreement by Dec. 15, the county will stop almost all 911 services to Union Point. Bullard said Union Point police would only be notified about 911 calls “through the use of tone-alert voice pagers,” and they would not be able to access the county’s computer database equipment and communi cation system. Tuesday night, the Union Point City Council voted to offerto sign a30-day tempo rary agreement that would extend full services to Jan. 15, 2016 while both parties talked. It did not offer any additional payment. The resolution indicates that by that date, Union Point will have received equipment and training so that its officers can access state and national police databases to check driver licenses, registration, stolen items and other informa tion. But it will still need the county to relay to them all 911 emergency and non-emergency calls as well as the ability to use the countywide communica tion system. 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