Parent Wants Child to Attend Pickens County Middle School, BOE to Control Teacher Absences

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At a Pickens County BOE meeting last week, Pickens County resident and parent of three Pickens County School children, John Curry, spoke to the board about how he felt the board had neglected to make the right decision concerning students in the Pickens County School System wanting to transfer to other schools in the system.Curry who told the board he had attended the BOE’s last meeting to try and find a solution to whether or not his child could attend Pickens County Middle School instead of Jasper Middle School, told the board that he felt like the children wanting to transfer schools had been neglected because the board decided to speak more about another issue that night.

“My intent is not to be confrontational but just to speak on behalf of the children.”

Curry said at the beginning of his comments to the BOE.

Following this statement, Curry then told the board that he had a daughter who had asked him if he was going to give up on seeing if she could go to Pickens County Middle School, and this was the reason he had came back to another meeting.

Curry then informed the board that at the last meeting they has spent more time talking about seven non-resident students than the resident students wanting to transfer schools.

What Curry was referring to is a non-resident student issue the board has been in the process of recently deciding. The issue stems from non-resident students from Dawson County living in the Big Canoe area being allowed to attend Pickens County Schools.

Currently, there are six students living in Dawson County attending Pickens County Schools. The students have been going to Pickens County Schools for years because they are the younger siblings of students allowed to attend Pickens County Schools before Dawson established a bus route to Big Canoe. The BOE had discussed at the prior meeting on whether or not they would keep allowing for these non-residents to continue to go to Pickens County Schools.

“I am now in the process of trying to identify who those seven kids are. As a parent of this County, I need to know if one of those seven non-resident kids who are not paying to go to school here is preventing my child from going to school where she wants.”

Said Curry in the BOE meeting.

Curry continued and told the board that he worried how his eleven year old daughter would lose friendships because she is being forced to attend Jasper Middle School, and also expressed how he didn’t understand why she had to attend this school when he has to drive by Pickens County Middle School when taking her to school.

Before ending his presentation, Curry also informed the board that he had been told the number of students wanting to tranfer to schools more convenient to them wasn’t that large. Curry then asked the board to

“do the right thing”

and allow for the students to transfer if it wasn’t going to be a big number.

Also in the meeting the school delivered its first reading of school policies for revisions. As procedure, whenever the board has to vote on revision to policies, the board will first read the revisions at a BOE meeting before deciding to vote on the revisions at the next. The policies read at the BOE meeting included policies for medicines, the gifted program, the GAKA reduction in force policy, personnel smoking, leave and absences, and the parent involvement policy. Major changes to these policies included changes to the medical policy such as allowing kids with diabetes to carry their insulin, and blood test equipment, and changing the personnel smoking policy to make Pickens County School completely tobacco free.

Superintendent Desper also expressed a need for Pickens County Schools to reduce teacher absences.

Desper explained that while Pickens County Schools has one of the highest rates of student attendance, they are unfortunately having a problem with teacher absences. Desper said of the absences,

“One of the things we need to do is get better at it.”

Desper also commented that the State of Georgia gives $150 per employee a year to pay for substitutes which approximately pays for two days of substituting.

“We earned last year $52,000 from the state in subtitle. We paid out $432,000. You always pay out a lot more than you get, but this number is very high to me.”

Lastly, in the meeting on Thursday, Desper said that he was proud to announce that Pickens County Schools had completed their first ever Strategic Planning Initiative.

“We are required to participate in Strategic Planning,”

said Desper.

“It’s a very time consuming effort to go do a Stragetic Planning.”

Desper also told FYN that the BOE were told to make a Stragetic Plan in 2009, but did not finish it at that time and because of this they had to start over this year. Desper said that a total of 67 people were involved in a process of setting up a strategic plan that will guide the Pickens County School System for the next three to five years. The plan Desper said, was very data based and included things such as budgets, test scores, policies, and also gave people an opportunity to suggest changes. Desper concluded that each principal at Pickens County Schools will be trained to tie their school’s own strategic plan to the system’s strategic plan. “It’s going to be about working in on the same place and working on the same things. We need to work together.”

Desper also informed FYN on Tuesday that Pickens County Schools had received their tax figures for the year, and while no meeting had been called yet, he expected the BOE would approve the school system’s budget at the August BOE meeting.

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