Fannin planning for start of school year

Parents input will be sought through survey

  • Fannin County School System Finance Director Susan Wynn received the Award of Distinction for Excellent Financial Reporting from the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts for the fiscal year that ended June 30 of 2019. She is shown with business services team members Amy Buchanan, Pamela DeCosta, Rebecca Towe and Jill Holloway, and school board members Chad Galloway, Terry Bramlett, Lewis DeWeese, Bobby Bearden and Mike Cole.
    Fannin County School System Finance Director Susan Wynn received the Award of Distinction for Excellent Financial Reporting from the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts for the fiscal year that ended June 30 of 2019. She is shown with business services team members Amy Buchanan, Pamela DeCosta, Rebecca Towe and Jill Holloway, and school board members Chad Galloway, Terry Bramlett, Lewis DeWeese, Bobby Bearden and Mike Cole.
  • Fannin County School System Superintendent Dr. Michael Gwatney received the 2020 Johnnye V. Cox Award from the University of Georgia (UGA) Department of Lifelong Education, Administration and Policy for outstanding contributions to the field of instructional supervision through service and scholarship.
    Fannin County School System Superintendent Dr. Michael Gwatney received the 2020 Johnnye V. Cox Award from the University of Georgia (UGA) Department of Lifelong Education, Administration and Policy for outstanding contributions to the field of instructional supervision through service and scholarship.

    Fannin County School System officials intend to use state guidance, local health official recommendations, and parent/guardian and system employee survey responses when finalizing plans to re-open schools for the 2020-2021 school year.

    “Educators have missed their kids,” Assistant Superintendent of Achievement & Governance Sarah Rigdon said. “We did do a great job with online learning. I would not go back and re-write any of that, and I would not take any of the kudos away from the people who worked so hard to make that happen, but that’s really not why all of us went to school or what we want to do. We believe in the face-to-face of educating our kids. That relationship is critically important.”

    The Georgia Department of Education and Georgia Department of Public Health released information pertaining to “Georgia’s path to recovery for K-12 schools.” The plan addresses recommendations to safely re-open schools amid three levels of community spread of COVID-19: Substantial Spread, Minimal/Moderate Spread and Low/No Spread.

    According to Rigdon, the system is developing plans for the Minimal/Moderate Spread and Low/No Spread levels.

    “Low or no spread is basically like traditional school,” Rigdon said. “There are some obvious differences when it comes to prevention and sanitation and things like that, but it would still allow us to welcome our students back to a regular school year. There are changes that we would make, obviously, but it does at least give us comfort to believe that we would be able to have our kids back in school.”

    If a minimal/moderate spread plan is used, the system may have to utilize practices such as a hybrid model where students do not all attend school everyday.

    “There are probably a hundred different ways that we could structure that,” Rigdon said. “The entire purpose of doing a hybrid schedule would be to simply reduce the number of people present so that we would reduce the rate of infection.”

    District leadership went through the state’s information and sought input from local health professionals and emergency management representatives, as well as principals and School Governance Team members. The next step will be to get feedback from parents/guardians and employees through surveys that will be sent to emails the school system has on file.

    Following a survey period, the system will review the feedback and adjust their re-opening plans accordingly.

    “It is important for us to hear from our families, and once we hear from our families we will do our very best to be reactive to their feedback as we make our final plans,” Rigdon said.

    The system tentatively plans to refine their plans and release them to the public during the school board’s July 9 meeting.