CULLMAN, Ala. – Cullman County School Superintendent Dr. Shane Barnette and the Cullman County Board of Education (CCBOE) took time during their regular November meeting Thursday to give their monthly CCBOE e5 Exceptional Service Award to Michael Lindsey of West Point Elementary School and Mark Camp of the Cullman Area Technology Academy.
Barnette also recognized Child Development Center Teacher Summer Walker, who was recently named Educator of the Year by the North Alabama Area Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities at its annual awards luncheon in October. The organization said of the honor, “This award is public recognition of an educator who has significantly contributed to students with disabilities and demonstrated an ongoing interest in people with disabilities.”
Barnette told The Tribune, “We’re so excited that Summer was chosen for the teacher of the year because of her dedication and commitment to all of our special needs students, and she is very much deserving of this award.”
Barnette talks about rising grades on state report card
During his comments, Barnette talked to the board and audience about improvements in the system’s performance on the annual Alabama State Department of Education State Report Card. The Cullman County school system scored a 90 in 2019, a five-point increase over 2018, and marking a 10-point increase in two years, reaching an A letter grade. The overall system scores were as follows:
- Academic Achievement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71.5
- Academic Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99.67
- Graduation Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93.69
- College and Career Readiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90.32
- Chronic Absenteeism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.48
- Progress in English Language Proficiency . . . . . . 51.49
- Proficiencies
- Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48.35
- Math . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53.69
- Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42.1
A full listing of all county and city schools’ scores can be found at www.cullmantribune.com/2019/10/19/alsde-state-report-card-cullman-city-county-schools-receive-a/.
Later, Barnette told The Tribune, “Several different factors go into the state report card, and one of them is our graduation rate, which is higher than it’s ever been. Our administration, our faculty and staff have all worked really hard to get kids to stay in school and to graduate. Then the second factor is our college and career readiness. That percentage that goes into the state report card is: kids can be considered college and career ready if there are several different indicators, and some of those are dual enrollment and AP classes, and getting credentials-career tech credentials-and we’ve increased in all three of those areas.”
He continued, “Also, one of the indicators on the state report card is attendance, and we’ve increased our attendance across the district through many different initiatives and things like that, that they’ve been doing. Then, the academic growth where, when a student comes into or starts the school year at one achievement level, where we grow them to be achieving by the end of the year, we’ve worked really hard to doing that through interventions and such. And we’ve got students that are growing academically at a lot higher rate than they have in the past.
“All of those things together resulted in a high state report card, and we’re really proud of that. I’m extremely excited about how hard our district, all of our faculty and staff, and students have been working, because they’ve taken a lot of pride in their work, and they’re achieving greatness. And it’s a really exciting time to be part of Cullman County Schools.”
The CCBOE will meet next on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019. The work session is at 5:30 p.m. with the board meeting immediately following. The public is invited to attend.
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