Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

MMS faculty busy with meetings

Meetings, meetings and more meetings. This has been what the McRae Middle School faculty has been doing of late.

Jamie Barnes, speaking to the Prescott School Board at its May meeting, said the faculty has been attending meetings to learn new strategies to improve MMS and/or getting the grades for Benchmark exams up.

A total of 16 members, along with Barnes, went to the Mid-Level Regional meeting in Hot Springs at the Hot Springs Convention Center. There they heard a number of speaker and returned inspired and energized. The meeting, she said, was strictly for middle schools and was appropriate for the needs of MMS.

Four other members of the staff attended a literacy lab workshop, which is an introduction to a new concept. This was at Harding University in Searcy. The workshop focused on teaching reading and writing.

Four more teachers, and Barnes, went to College Hill Middle School in Texarkana, along with members of Gurdons Cabe Middle School. College Hill, she said is a Milikin Foundation Winner.

MMS has also been working with Middle Start, an educational advisory consultant to work on school improvement by putting in new strategies to get the Benchmark Test scores up.

Awards assemblies were held Thursday, May 26, with school ending for the year May 27.

Willie Wilson, dean of students at Prescott High School, gave an activity report for PHS.

Graduation, he said, was May 13, followed immediately by Project Graduation, which was a success once again.

However, everything wasnt perfect on graduation night as there were several seniors who werent allowed to walk with their classmates because they didnt make the grades to graduate. These students have enrolled in correspondence courses or will attend summer school. Either way, they have to foot the bill to get their diploma.

More college prep courses will be added to the PHS curriculum next year. Most of these will be through distance learning.

Wilson has been visiting the home of juniors who are academically deficient and could have problems graduating next year. He said the district is looking at the possibility of a Saturday school to help.