On Monday, the Board of Education held its second public, advertised school budget meeting and regular board meeting.
During the beginning of the regular board meeting, Ryan Bradford, the husband of an elementary school teacher, came forth to make a public comment on the safety of the school system. Bradford presented to the board a prepared speech that he said also will be addressed to the Board of Commissioners.
“There is one critical area that I do not see being currently filled, and that is the role of the Resource Officer,” said Bradford. “As anyone in law enforcement will tell you, in an event where someone is coming to commit an evil act such as a school shooting, it is absolutely the best case scenario to have someone onsite that can confront that individual with lethal force as quickly as possible.”
His request was to see a resource officer, or someone similar, be tasked within the schools with helping to directly impact the problem and provide a greater defense against potential evil.
“As with most, if not all of these mass shootings, they typically either stop or kill themselves once they are confronted with lethal resistance,” said Bradford.
He acknowledged the lack of manpower to staff schools with a resource officer and offered the suggestions of either following the Georgia statutes that allow teachers to carry firearms, or have a team of well-trained, screened volunteers that would carry firearms.
He did volunteer himself for one day a week if the board were to use screened volunteers. According to Bradford, based on a conversation with Sheriff Sills before the meeting, a trained and vetted security team has the support of Sheriff Sills, who told him that he would be willing to provide radio communication with that team.
“Sadly, law enforcement has taken a heavy hit in recent years and needs support. For now, I believe that schools need an alternate solution,” said Bradford.
“Unfortunately, the reality is tomorrow some deranged person could decide to take a gun and go to a Putnam County school to start killing and there would be no armed resistance on site.”
After Bradford’s public comment, the board began with its regular session. The Georgia Milestone scores for this year were presented to the board. Developing scores mean a student scored a 2 or higher on milestones, while a proficient score means they scored 3 or 4.
In elementary school, fifth-grade ELA and science milestones showed the highest gains, while third-grade math and fifth-grade ELA are pushing the most students to the proficient score. Overall, math had the highest percentage.
At the middle-school level, the local school overall saw positive gains in scores. There were two classes of physical science tests this year, rather than one, with 65 percent of students scoring in the proficient range on milestones.
The high-school level also showed an overall positive gain, with American Literature showing the most improvement, as 87 percent of students scored a 2 or higher, representing a more than 20-percent increase.
Biology also showed a push into students scoring in the proficient range; however, it was recognized that writing is currently a weaker subject for students across the board and the school system is working to correct that in hopes of raising ELA scores.
When presenting the graphs on cohorts (studies that estimate the risk or rate of an outcome among a specific group of individuals), the cohort for math showed more of a decline than that for the ELA cohort. However, Putnam County School Superintendent Eric Arena explained the differentiation is due to ELA having more room for improvement based on math having very high average scores to begin with. The COVID epidemic and differing testing environments as students returned to school from testing at home also was mentioned as a contributor to these trends.
Overall, the board agreed it would like to see more improvement, with board Chairman Dr. Steve Weiner adamant on understanding the struggles, but not approving of where the statistics currently lie.
“Where I’m coming from is the lack of improvement. The kids are not getting better with time and that’s what concerns me about those numbers. If you ask if I understand why? Yes. If you ask me, am I satisfied with those numbers, the answer is no,” said Weiner.
The Putnam school system is working to improve these statistics through a five-year plan to get numbers back to where they were before COVID. To achieve that, the district plan includes targeted interventions for subgroups, extended learning in the summer and after school, acceleration for students who meet the requirements, a focus on writing (a component of the ELA scores), and a blended learning style focused on student choice.
At the request of Weiner, Arena said he will present to the board a comparison of the schools from this year to what would be expected after five years, in order for the board to gauge how the plan is working at the moment. However, it should be noted, Arena said, the school system is only 24 months into the plan.
To end the board meeting, the three board members present of the five members approved the current tax digest and five-year tax levy, the advertised budget, a CTAE grant application, HVAC repair and maintenance at PCHS, a gym floor refinishing at PCHS, and the superintendent’s recommended personnel.