Selma City Schools (SCS)Superintendent Dr. Avis Williams delivered her “State of our Schools” address Tuesday night at the regularly scheduled Selma City Schools Board meeting.
Williams dived into detail regarding the the instructional goals and targets for the 2019-2020 school year, district accomplishments from the 2018 -2019 school year and discussed what’s next for Selma City Schools.
The instructional goals in Williams’ address included: improve student achievement by one quartile in reading and math, decrease by five percent both truancy (unexcused absences) and chronic absenteeism (all absences) in all schools, increase by seven percent the number of CTE students credentialed, close the proficiency gap by five percent between general education and special education students and increase the district-wide academic growth rate from 90.21 percent to 95 percent to represent holistic student growth.
District Accomplishments cited by Williams included: Increased community engagement and partnering, $100,000s in grants for schools and the district, STEAM in the Black Belt, Pathway to Performance Excellence, Model School District at the Model Schools Conference, National Conference Presentations, a teacher of the year finalist and a superintendent finalist for state superintendent of the year.
Elsewhere in the meeting, Williams presented awards to several SCS principals for improvement shown in the release of the recent State Report Cards.
After the presentation of the awards, SCS Board Member Dr. Tanya Miles commended SCS staff members for the improvements.
“Thank y’all for your hard work,” she said. “[Selma City Schools] are moving forward, and we will continue to move forward. Support your superintendent, support your principals and your teachers and we’ll support you.”
“Thank you for that,” said Williams in response to Miles’ comment. “That really means a lot. We’ve got folks who are being really creative and working hard and taking this job very seriously. Our core work is improving the academic outcomes of our scholars, that’s the core of what we do…We need the support of our board and our community.”