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HENRY COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE PUBLICATION YOUR BUSINESS IS OUR BUSINESS

AUGUST 2018

HAMPTON • LOCUST GROVE • MCDONOUGH • STOCKBRIDGE

Comfortably South of Atlanta

The Henry County Chamber of Commerce serves as the voice for the business community, provides quality services and programs that meet the needs of its members, improves the economic environment of the community and creates a legacy of leadership for the future.

The Chamber also offers our Board Room and our smaller conference room, the Toppan Room, free to members. They make a great location to meet clients, hold training sessions, conduct interviews or just a meeting space for your business. The Chamber has free wi-fi available as well. Remember our facility is for our members to use.

BACK TO SCHOOL

By JD Hardin, Director, Communications & Public Relations Henry County Schools

It’s time to celebrate another new

year but not the new year that occurs during colder weather. It’s time for everyone in Henry County to celebrate another new year for our school district.

There will be just over 42,000 students starting school in one of the 52 facilities across the district as July rolls into August. Yellow buses will be opening their doors to drop off riders, and parents will wave goodbye to anxious students ready to see friends again and be taught by one of the dedicated, caring teachers and staff members in the ninth largest district in the state.

Families from all corners of the county can expect that district leaders have been hard at work preparing for the next school year since before school dismissed for the summer. This year, a new superintendent has been a part of that very purposeful work. Superintendent Mary Elizabeth Davis joined the district in November of 2017 after the retirement of Rodney Bowler. Davis comes to the district from Cobb County Schools where she served as the Chief Academic Officer for the second largest district in Georgia.

After her introduction, Superintendent Davis set out on a tour of the district to hear from parents, students, staff members, community members, and business and government officials in order to better understand the unique place the district holds within the fabric of the county and the overall education landscape in Georgia. There were many conversations had with great input collected.

From the dialogue and analysis conducted, there were three main strategic priorities crafted as a result. The focus of our work this year will include:

1. Unifying Henry County around excellence in public education.

2. Strengthening our core business of student learning.

3. Ensuring a high-performing environment for all students.

Each plays an important role moving forward in helping our students learn and achieve at the highest levels, which will ultimately position Henry County Schools as a destination school district and allow us to be a model for other districts to follow. It will require a team effort to see these priorities realized.

The best school districts have the highest levels of parent and community involvement, and it is inherent on us all to support the schools, employees, and students to ensure we have a district of which we can remain proud.

Each voice matters. We are better together.

Knowing this, we are proud to share with our community that among the new things they will see in our schools this year is an increase in safety and security measures. One of the most noticeable additions is that of school resource officers at more of our schools. School resource officers have traditionally been stationed at our high schools and responsible for covering the schools in their respective clusters. Now there will also be a school resource officer at each of our middle schools in order to provide greater coverage and response to any type of safety or security-related incident. Our students are our greatest responsibility and their safety and security is our number one concern.

The opportunity to make the enhancement to our safety measures stemmed from district planning and community conversations with the public and county leaders. From there, our solid partnership with the county government and Henry County Sheriff’s Office made the suggestion offered a reality.

There is much more to feature and celebrate for our students, staff and school communities this upcoming school year, and we know you will be just as excited to see and experience them as we are to be able to provide them for our great county.