The Putnam County Board of Education hosted its work session at Putnam County High School (PCHS) on Sept. 11 to watch the PCHS showcase, hear updates on school safety, and hear updates about the new elementary school.
PCHS showcased the Putnam Jazz Ensemble, highlighted their recent trip to Albany University with 26 rising ninth graders, and had multiple students speak who have been involved with the National Humanities Conference. Alongside these speakers and presentations, tables with fine art displays and videos for viewing led into the black box theatre.
As part of the showcase, the Putnam Jazz Ensemble announced they will be performing on the main stage at Universal Studios after being accepted through the audition process. T
wo students who attended the three-day Albany State University trip highlight things they learned and activities they participated in, including exploring the Flint River, learning about Ram and campus life, going through a law enforcement simulation, and more?
In addition, the faculty in charge of the Putnam Model that was previously presented at the National Humanities Conference announced that PCHS has been chosen to attend the conference again. During this conference, they will be presenting samples of the model and discussing its effectiveness. These samples were based on place-based experiential learning field trips to North Georgia with 13 students and Albany State University with 12 students.
During the Albany State University trip, students researched the civil rights movement, black coat laws, and the Albany Movement. On the North Georgia trip, students learned about the erasure of Native American history.
As part of these trips, students created their own projects to present the findings of each of their groups. Some forms of these projects included poems, speeches, a rap, and a wall design, which were presented to the board.
Moving into board matters. Assistant Superintendent Derick Austin gave updates on school safety and the new elementary school.
According to Austin, the intruder drills that occurred last week allowed the school system to learn a lot internally.
He also stated that law enforcement was at the in-town schools in two minutes or less and at the high school in four minutes or less during the drill. He stated he was also told that deputies “didn’t drive as fast due to it being a drill” and that the results of the drill make him “feel confident moving forward.”
In regards to the new elementary school, Austin presented eight schematic drawings that presented the gross building area, green space, exterior perimeter and total numbers, and construction costs. Between all eight plans, the construction cost ranged from $36.2 million to over $39 million.
The main differences in each plan were the size of classrooms, the amount of green space, or the removal of green space for a conditioned cover area. Closing this update, Austin then showed a prototypical display and explained to the board that whichever plan they would like to go with would fit into the prototypical display that showed typical classroom and stem labs.
The public board meeting will be Sept. 18 and the board will make a decision on the plans presented so the details can be taken back to the architect.