Cherokee School Board Announces Core Beliefs and Performance Goals

The Cherokee County school board has announced its core beliefs, and student performance goals for the next three years.

Over the past few months, school board members have participated in three trainings to accomplish three major initiatives: developing communications protocols; defining their core beliefs for what CCSD must do to meet and exceed community expectations; and setting specific student performance goals for the next three years.

The school board’s newly developed core beliefs were shared for the first time at their September meeting, as well as the specific student performance goals.

The core beliefs are:

1. All students are highly engaged in their education and capable of reaching their full learning potential.

2. Employees are trusted and supported as professionals and provided with resources to elevate student outcomes.

3. Families and our community are involved partners in student success and can expect all students to receive the best education possible.

4. Schools create positive and welcoming environments as well as have clear expectations and accountability in all academic and operational areas.

These beliefs will guide the school board as they move forward in not only their governance, but also in their development of new school board policies they will draft together starting in the fall.

To set their first student performance goals, the school board began by accepting shared definitions of student performance and accountability.

Student performance in CCSD is defined as: “Students are learning more, growing more, and achieving more in a CCSD classroom than they could anywhere else.”

Accountability is defined as: “In CCSD, our goals are clear and when we achieve those goals, we celebrate. When we fall short of achieving those goals, we adjust our practices, that we either inherited or developed, to achieve new outcomes for students.”

For these first student performance goals, the school board together set three-year goals in reading on grade-level and English Language Arts (ELA) proficiency in grades three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and American Literature, as measured by Georgia Milestones Assessment scores. To aid them in setting these goals, school board members reviewed three years’ worth of testing data for CCSD students, state averages and data from comparable school districts statewide.

The school board set goals of students improving by six percentage points over three years for all grade levels tested, with the exception of seventh grade, for which the goals were set as four percentage points for reading and nine percentage points for ELA.

To implement these goals, CCSD’s Accountability department will be working with School Leadership and Operations assistant superintendents to support school principals in analyzing their school’s student performance data and setting aligned school improvement plan goals, the district reported. The accountability department will be regularly sharing student performance reports online at https://www.cherokeek12.net/divisions/curriculum-instruction/accountability .

As these school-level improvement goals are developed, school principals will engage their faculty in best practices for classroom instruction and using data to increase student performance.

Georgia Milestones statewide data for math is expected to be released later this month. After that data is released, the school board will set goals for the same grade levels for math.

School Board Chair Kyla Cromer thanked her fellow board members for their dedication to the additional training and collaboration.

“We really think this is going to continue to elevate the excellence in the county,” she said.

Also at the meeting, Superintendent Mary Elizabeth Davis shared her quarterly progress report on her key priorities for the district. The full report is online at tinyurl.com/49v3y3ru.