Stephens Co. BOE Meets

The Stephens County school system approves bringing in state assistance to help set up a new five-year local facilities plan.

Tuesday, the Board of Education unanimously voted to approve a resolution requesting the Georgia Department of Education’s assistance in developing the local facilities plan.

Stephens County School Superintendent Bryan Dorsey said the resolution will open up more options and avenues for the school system then trying to do it alone.

“It helps us bring in some expertise from folks who have done this throughout the years at the state level,” said Dorsey. “It also affords us an opportunity to bring in other individuals from school systems that will help us go through this process, identify some of our needs from an independent lens. It also is a process that walks us through things that we could earn for our facilities that could be funded by the state that we could then apply for that grant and get funding for some of the things we need in our school system.”

Dorsey said that the resolution will now be submitted to the state Department of Education to get its approval for the state to come in and help the Stephens County school system.

The Board of Education had first looked at the resolution on Thursday at its work session.

Also on Tuesday, the Board of Education unanimously approved a motion to expand use of the Renaissance Learning Software program.

According to Dorsey, this is a program that the school system already uses, but will just now expand using.

He said it is assessment software.

“It helps our teachers look at data so they will know what they might need to consider when helping a child in both their language and their mathematics,” said Dorsey, who added it is for grades K through 9.

The software expansion will cost the school system an additional $25,000.