Last Thursday, January 19, the Washington County, GA Board of Education held a called meeting stretching into the very early hours of Friday morning. Spanning almost 6 full hours, the Board got updates from school and administration leaders. Following the presentations the Board adjourned for an executive session.
This was the second meeting the newly sworn-in Board members have conducted this month. Why such a lengthy meeting? Meetings require proper legal notice and preparation on the part of school leaders and administrators in addition to the Board itself. I appreciate the time and patience everyone involved invested in the meeting.
Item 10 on the agenda included “Superintendent Code of Conduct (transparency and professionalism).” The Executive Session items specified “Superintendent’s Evaluation (artifacts)” and a call with the Board’s attorneys.
If you followed my efforts to better understand, and share, among many questions, the Covid case load and exposure in the schools and what was reported to the state’s department of public health, it was less than transparent on the part of system leaders. Dr. Edmond refused to even send me the form required for weekly reporting. Undeterred, I got the same form with data from two different Middle Georgia school systems who proudly and readily sent it to me.
To see conduct and transparency as an item for leadership discussion so early in this Board’s tenure is encouraging. The link to the January 19th meeting was posted on the system’s web site, a first if I recall correctly, a most welcome improvement over having to request a link via email for a meeting open to the public.
Less than 12 hours after the Board adjourned, the Washington County community was stunned to learn, and see all over Middle Georgia television coverage, that the high school’s drama teacher, Michael Allan Dendy of Milledgeville, had been arrested and charged with pornography involving children under 18. Sheriff Joel Cochran released a statement to the media before lunch.
Parents registered with the system’s ParentSquare platform got a short update from the Board office around lunch time last Friday. That statement, nor any other, has been posted on the system’s web site or anywhere else, based on multiple searches. That leaves taxpayers supporting the schools with no information from the system’s leaders. This also opens the door for gossip and speculation shared as fact. In any community those things might happen. However, an official statement creates an opportunity for damage control when an organization finds itself in a less than favorable position.
We are a week out from very serious situation in our schools, one that no community wants to see happen. Dr. Edmond has not responded to my email about a statement being made available for the community. Board Chair Robbie Blocker kindly told me earlier today he would check with Edmond about a statement. If I receive anything I will promptly share it.
The school system can address the serious issue it is dealing with, how it is providing support to students, faculty, staff, and parents, and steps being taken to provide continuity of school programming, without endangering any law enforcement investigations or future actions. School leaders may well be exceeding everyone’s hopes and expectations at this difficult time.
Our schools have outstanding resources, parents, and students to do just that, but instead we aren’t being told anything at all. Addressing serious issues in a timely manner from school board leaders is due to the community in order for us to maintain our confidence in their work on behalf of our students.
Tag: school board
A survey is only as good as the controls it sets
Lunches have been packed, sleep routines reset, and spelling words called out since students returned to classrooms across Georgia. Now parents, teachers, and students are reviewing progress reports and sizing up what happens during the next half of the grading period.
This point in the school year also gives school leaders an opportunity to review what is working and what might need to be adjusted. During a pandemic, the ability for schools to pivot on a pinhead may be the difference between lives saved and lost.
On the afternoon of Thursday, September 9, 2021, Washington County Public Schools sent out a survey using a Google platform tool asking for feedback from the school community. The survey tool is one I have used as both an executive director and board president of nonprofits.
The school system’s email with the link to the survey was sent to me by parents in the community. The form didn’t ask for any identifying information: no name, email, address, phone number. It did ask if the person responding is a school employee. It could be filled out by anyone anywhere who had the link. I filled it out and submitted it. Twice.
Friday morning when I returned to the link it said I had already submitted my answer. Fair enough. After poking around with it some during the second of many cups of coffee, I got this:
September 10, 2021
The survey showed my email address, but Google’s software told me it wasn’t collecting anything from my account.
This isn’t the first time the schools have sent out a survey without parameters set on who could fill out the survey, or requiring any identifying information, in order to submit the survey. Last school year I picked up the phone and ended up talking with Dr. Rickey Edmond, who assured me that they were able to collect identifying data even though none was require to submit answers. I told him having seen the backside of these surveys via my Google business account, I’d sure like to know how they were managing that, because it might help me in the future. All I got was, “We can.”
With the broad questions asked in last week’s survey, what can Dr. Edmond the Board of Education, and school principals really take away beyond how smooth car pick up and drop off are, and general satisfaction with instruction? Is a blind survey the only way for school leaders to know how parents and employees gauge the school year to date? How confident can school leaders, parents, teachers, and students be that the survey sent out on Thursday has the controls and parameters to collect accurate information?
It will be interesting to see what Dr. Edmond and the Board of Education members share with the community. Based on recent inquiries by myself and others concerned about the system’s Covid-19 record-keeping and reporting, my confidence in the quality of information collected and shared by the school system is low. Will the results of a survey available to anyone with email be used to guide judgement impacting not only the education of every student, but the health of the entire Washington County community?
When schools think it is ok for a drunk to drive the school bus
Watching the schools prepare to reopen in rural Washington County Georgia is like watching someone pour gasoline on top of an already burning fire. As Covid-19 rates soar in a county that stubbornly refused to access tested and proven vaccines when a state-run vaccination site was set up in the county, the Board of Education is choosing the path of least resistance on healthy safety requirements.
The highly contagious Delta variant will find multiple classrooms ripe for explosive spread. The risk of exposure could be easily reduced if school leaders were willing to take one necessary step to protect those who cannot be vaccinated and those who refuse to be vaccinated-require masks in all indoor situations.
How bad is it in Sandersville and other communities in the county? Bad. Very bad.
The CDC rates the risk of transmission as high. According to the CDC, the percentage of people in the county fully vaccinated is a dismal 7.7 percent despite the easy access to the vaccine provided by the state in the spring when eligibility was expanded. School age students between 12-18 years old are fully vaccinated at a rate of 9 percent. If teachers and staff are in the age group of 18-65, only 9.4 percent of that age cohort have chosen to be fully vaccinated before returning to the classroom, cafeterias, hallways, and buses.
Yesterday the school system superintendent responded to an email I sent stating that they are following Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) recommendations. Choosing the Education link on the state’s site takes users directly to the CDC’s site, which recommends masking for all people in schools regardless of vaccination status or age.
Still, Superintendent Rickey Edmond and the Board of Education are confident that letting 1405 students in the primary and elementary schools, 760 in the middle school, and 880 in the high school, sit in classrooms and move through hallways without a mask on is OK (because let’s be honest, it will not be possible to keep every child in a hallway distanced or properly masked). There is a Virtual School option only offered to grades 5-12, with limited capacity and criteria for acceptance, that will have 20 students.
The reported cases of Covid-19 in the seven days preceding August 2 are up 161.54 percent. The percent of tests that are positive has climbed by 15.63 percent. Local hospital admissions are up a full 200 percent. Schools haven’t had the first student in a classroom and the caseload is soaring in a county with great doctors but limited hospital services.
Late yesterday, a news report posted on Georgia Public Radio’s site summed it for me. Amber Schmidtke, PhD., a microbiologist tracking and explaining Covid data for mere mortals like me, said, and I am adding emphasis to her statement”So when this starts to happen [children becoming sick and requiring hospitalization] in a bigger way in Georgia and kids who were previously healthy are on ventilators, I don’t want school superintendents to claim that there was no way this could have been predicted,” Schmidtke said. “We have plenty of warning that the situation in 2021 is more dangerous than a year ago for children. Willingly choosing to endanger children by not doing the bare minimum of disease control and prevention should be treated the same way as knowingly allowing someone drunk to drive a school bus and organizations that do so should be held to account.”
Teachers and staff are preparing now for open houses in Washington County schools, with classes starting Friday. In a community with a rising case load, doubled Covid hospitalizations, low vaccination rates, and school leaders willing to, as Dr. Schmidtke suggests, let a drunk drive the school bus, they are providing the ideal breeding ground for very sick children, families, teachers, and staff.
It doesn’t have to be this way.