The State Board met for committee meetings on Wednesday, September 28. Click here to review the committee meeting items and here for the full State Board meeting.

Committee Meetings 

Rules

First the Rules Committee met and breezed through their two items, posting the standards for a Research, Design and Project Management course and an amendment adding two RESA’s to the list of Local Board Governance Training Providers. These items were added to the consent agenda for the full State Board meeting.

District Flexibility & Charter Schools

This committee had three items, The first was the list of approved Charter School Board Training providers, next was a charter system renewal for Randolph County and the final item was affirming the State Charter Schools Commission Approvals. All items were added to the consent agenda. 

At the end of the meeting Chairman Jason Downey asked for discussion on school boards that have failed to adopt policies required by recent legislation. He named no names but said it is his hope that have failed to adopt those policies will see that the State Board is discussing it and get the required adoption done.  If they have been adopted by the November meeting, he believes they need to address the issue. The State Board asked the GaDOE to compile a list for review. More on this as it develops.

Budget

The Budget Committee had a list of nine items which all went on the consent agenda. Please visit the link above for committee items if you are interested in seeing what was approved. 

Presentation- Innovative Assessment

The State Board heard presentations regarding the Innovative Assessment pilot for the GMAPS and Putnam consortium using Navvy. This pilot program was a provision of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. Five states were approved for the program; Georgia was the only one approved for two competing pilots. 

Marietta City Schools (GMAPS Consortium) and Putnam County (NAVVY Consortium) presented. The two pilot school districts had a high level of frustration with the GaDOE and the SBOE as to the direction of the programs. They said neither the SBOE, the GaDOE nor the USED had provided feedback or resources on the pilot programs and that the future was uncertain. The districts did not want to proceed with the amount of work and testing without indication of where the program was going. 

After much discussion the SBOE and the GaDOE agreed that the programs should be reprioritized and added an item to the SBOE retreat agenda to discuss the direction, support, and resources towards these two pilot assessment programs. If you would like to watch the presentations and discussion, click here and start at the 1:59:25 mark. To see the state reports on the pilots so far, check here.

SBOE Meeting

The State Board meeting on Thursday, September 29 went quickly with all items on the consent agenda with the exception of two legal appeals which were pulled for a separate vote. The State Board reversed the local board’s decision in appeal 2022-28 and remanded appeal 2022-31 to the local board with instructions to make further findings and conclusions as to the student’s self-defense claim after applying the appropriate law. 

Most of the meeting time was spent listening to a presentation on literacy from the Rollins Center for Language and Literacy. To watch the presentation, click here and start at the 1:04:27 mark. 

The State Board will hold their retreat on Jekyll Island October 10-12.