12
2020-21 FYI
'Lots of Moving Parts' Elmore County Public School system expands on several fronts STORY & PHOTO BY DANIEL DYE
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rowth and expansion have been primary topics of discussion and action in the Elmore County Public School System the past few years. For starters, the school system saw its number of enrolled students in the system’s 15 schools increase by 183 students to 11,205 for the 2019-20 school year. While the number of students continues to increase, the system has a philosophy that every child is empowered and every child succeeds. The Elmore County Board of Education recognizes that no one philosophy of education can express the total sentiments or beliefs of all teaching personnel. Generally, education is perceived as a process of growth and includes the mental, moral, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects of the individual. Each student is seen as a unique person who possesses certain potential, needs, aspirations and interests. As each student is different, the purpose of education is to provide appropriate experiences in school, which develop maximum achievement so each individual will become a useful and productive member of society. Taking the approach of meeting individual students where they are in their education and tailoring educational goals has proven to be effective as reported on the State of Alabama annual educational report card. The report card is designed so
parents, educators, stakeholders and others can easily understand how their schools are doing, just as report cards help parents understand how their children are doing. The goals of the report card are to provide a starting point, with concise information showing how a school is doing, and to make sure that schools are accountable for explaining that to their communities. Comparing the scores on the 100-point scale from the 2018-19 school year to the 2019-20 school year, Elmore County improved by
six points to an 88 and is two points away from an A. In comparison, the State of Alabama improved by four points to an 84 and remained at a B. “It is like moving a huge ship,” Elmore County Schools superintendent Richard Dennis said. “There are a lot of moving parts and it starts with the district and the principals.” According to Dennis, what the county’s school system found as it dug into student achievement data were pockets of students who were growing academically and pockets of students who were not growing aca-
