As Dr. Eric Mackey, superintendent for the Jacksonville City School System, stood before the Kiwanis Club on August 20, he had plenty of good news to share. The 2008 graduates from Jacksonville High School had the highest ACT scores in the county, at an average composite score of 21.2 their scores were higher than the state average, and testing in nearly every other area of the school system met or exceeded state requirements for the past school year.“Our greatest area of success was reading,” said Mackey of the ACT scores. “We do a lot of things with reading. We go above and beyond. One of the complaints you hear if you have kids in school is reading in the summer. We were the originators of summer reading in this part of the country and we have a pretty rigorous summer reading program.”
He also had good news for the group about the variety of classes being offered at the high school. The school system has added one advanced placement course in the time Mackey has been superintendent and has expanded the litany of dual enrollment courses offered.
“When I started we had two advanced placement and no dual enrollment classes at Jacksonville High School,” said Mackey. “This year we’re up to three advanced placement courses and we have six dual enrollment options with Gadsden State and Jacksonville State, so we’re doing a lot more to get kids college credit while they’re in high school.”
At the end of the 2007-08 school year, the system severed its ties with the Calhoun County Career Technical Center. Only six students at the time were taking advantage of courses at the CCCTC, so the school board decided instead to enhance the career technical course options offered at JHS. The school currently has five teachers for career tech and plans to add a sixth next year.
JHS has also expanded its distance learning options. The school system now has three distance learning labs and is now able to offer several different languages and other advanced courses online. Mackey said the school is carefully monitoring the quality of courses they offer through distance learning to ensure the students truly get the education they need.
“In distance learning we are now offering Latin, Chinese, advanced writing courses, several things,” said Mackey. “That has really grown and it’s going to grow more.”
Even as he listed the number of things the Jacksonville schools are doing right, he acknowledged areas needing improvement. Kitty Stone Elementary had one area of testing this past year not make its annual yearly progress goal – third through fifth grade reading.
Mackey said school administrators have narrowed the problem area down to the special education children and they are working to find ways to ensure the kids have the instruction and attention needed to take in and retain instruction.
“I can’t offer excuses because we didn’t make proficiency in special ed in grades 3, 4 and 5. It was especially grade 3 that scored very low. I’m not going to give you excuses about it, but what I am going to tell you is there are 42 kids in that grade level [third through fifth], including four that are severely disabled. They can’t read at all and they can’t function in a regular classroom,” said Mackey. “Of those 42, including those four, 16 kids were not proficient.”
The schools are working on ways to reach those students who need extra help to bring them up to proficiency and to ensure they don’t slip in other areas, the school system has hired an intervention teacher who is working with sixth, seventh and eighth grade students who have trouble with the math portion of the annual testing.
