Fayette County School System Cuts Costs With Summer Hours

Over $40,000 in utility costs was saved last year by using a four-day summer workweek at Fayette County schools. Because of its success, the school system is implementing the four-day schedule again to help save money for what is shaping up to be another tight budget year.

Twelve-month employees at the school system’s central offices and all 30 schools will work 10-hour days from 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday with Fridays off. Business hours for all offices and buildings, including the Welcome Center where new student registrations are handled, will be Monday-Thursday from 7 a.m.-5 p.m. and closed on Fridays. This schedule takes effect on June 8 and goes through July 23.

Anyone who needs to register a child for school or conduct other business with the school system should make a note of the summer hours.

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Mentors Needed for New Fayette County Program

If you want to help children and the future of our economy at the same time, the Friends Mentoring Program with the Fayette County School System needs you.

A new mentoring program for the school system’s Alternative School will begin this school year (2009-2010). Those who need mentors are facing tough personal situations and need advocates who refuse to give up on them. The majority of students enrolled at the school are males at the middle school level.

Sometimes students become so overwhelmed with their personal circumstances that they feel they have to make a choice between school and their issues. Often it is school that suffers, leading to poor academic performance and sometimes dropping out. Mentoring has shown to have the ability to assist youth in lifting themselves out of dire situations and placing them on a path to success.

Mentoring gives children the ability to change their circumstances, helps to build self-esteem, teaches children how to maintain successful relationships with adults and builds successful decision-making skills. Mentoring can also have a dramatic impact on the economy.

The Center for Labor Market Studies estimates that more than $250,000 is lost per youth in payment of payroll, federal and state income taxes and local property taxes per high school dropout. Also, research has shown that Americans without a high school diploma earn $400,000 less over a working lifetime than those who graduated. The average pay for a high school dropout is $11,031 per year compared to $23,059 for a graduate.

Adults have worldly experience that they can share with youth, guiding them toward a successful future. A commitment of one day, one hour per week mentoring a student throughout the school year could change that person’s entire life. If you would like to become a mentor for the new alternative school mentor program, contact Jane Gough, the Friends Mentoring Program manager, at 770-460-3990, ext. 255 or email gough.jane@fcboe.org.

Volunteers must successfully complete a criminal background check as well as an application that can be downloaded from the school system’s website, www.fcboe.org. Those accepted into the program will also be required to attend orientation training before working as a mentor.

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Speech-Language Pathologists Celebrate National Hearing and Speech Month

Fayette County's 34 speech-language pathologists gather for a rare photo opportunity to show their support of National Hearing and Speech Month.

May is Better Hearing and Speech Month and the Fayette County School System’s speech-language pathologists (SLP) are taking advantage of the 75-year old celebration to raise community awareness, knowledge and understanding of various forms of communication impairments and the work they do to help the county’s students overcome and/or cope with their disabilities.

The school system’s 34 SLPs serve over 1,215 speech-impaired students daily. They work with students in all grade levels, helping them gain communication skills so that they can be successful both academically and socially.

SLPs serve students who have difficulties in articulation/phonology, receptive/expressive language, pragmatic communication skills, voice and fluency. They also teach students who cannot speak verbally, or are hard to understand, how to use communication devices. Services are provided in a number of ways including one-on-one, resource settings, collaborative/classroom environments as well as in the community.

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders reports that approximately 10 percent of children have moderate to severe communication impairments, including speech production/articulation, stuttering and language-learning difficulties. Children with speech and language impairments are 4 to 5 times more likely than their peers to experience other language-learning disabilities including significant reading problems.

Speech impaired students are making big strides everyday in Fayette’s classrooms, improving their academic achievement, social quality of life, and ultimately career advancement potential. SLP Missy Vermeyen explains how she helped a nonverbal high school student progress from acting out in class and not participating in activities to becoming a leader who takes an active role in the classroom and is now speaking words and phrases.

“We gave her a simple communication device and she began using it immediately. She takes great pride in being able to participate in class and her speech intelligibility has improved dramatically. She now greets verbally with ‘hi’ and her name. This is only the beginning for her,” says Vermeyen.

Speech-language pathologists hold at least a master’s degree and are certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

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Review Committee Recommends Fayette County School System for District Accreditation

The Quality Assurance Review Team of AdvanceED has recommended the Fayette County School System for District Accreditation as a quality school system.

The announcement was made last Wednesday at 3 p.m. during a called session of the Fayette County Board of Education. The team announced its decision to recommend the school system for District Accreditation after spending three days reviewing documents, interviewing stakeholders and observing classrooms.

The accreditation team will submit its recommendation to the AdvancED Accreditation Commission for review. If the commission agrees with the committee’s findings, the school system and all of its schools will be granted a five-year term accreditation.

During the presentation of its report, the committee commended the school system for its “strong and positive academic learning climate in which teaching and learning are actively supported.” The report also commended the positive and productive working relationship among both external and internal stakeholders, the accessibility and openness to input from a broad spectrum of stakeholders and invaluable resources and support services that the system provides to schools.

Part of achieving and maintaining accreditation is implementing a continuous improvement process. The committee issued five recommendations that it feels the school system needs to address to maintain accreditation. The full report outlining the recommendations is on the school system’s website under eBoard. The public can also listen to the committee’s report on the podcast page of the website.

The school system will submit a report in two years detailing the progress it has made toward addressing the recommendations. This is a requirement to maintain and keep accreditation.

The school system started preparing for the accreditation committee’s visit a year ago by compiling a report that addresses the seven standards needed for accreditation. An explanation of how the district is meeting each of the standards, along with supporting documentation, is outlined in the complete report.

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