Toombs County School System Impacts Literacy
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Toombs County Schools Superintendent Barry Waller and the principals of the schools in the district recently sat down in a roundtable discussion to share their excitement and preparations for the 2024-2025 school year.
“We’re excited about a new school year,” Waller began. “I said it in our new teacher orientation [recently] that as you get older, the summers get shorter, but hopefully everyone has been able to get away for a while and have some family time and vacation. Once you get back from the Fourth of July, it’s full steam ahead.”
Waller went on to say that one of the things the district is most excited about is the continued growth of the literacy programs within the school system’s elementary schools. This has been a big focus since the passing of House Bill 538, which puts a focus on early literacy in the continued from page
state’s education system.
One of the projects which Toombs County Schools has been working on in an effort to promote early literacy is the creation of a “book bus,” a mobile school bus equipped with teachers and educational resources to help young students gain a passion for reading. “Our goal is to embrace that and to work with our community on early literacy,” Waller remarked, noting that the plan is to encourage participation with the book bus project by community daycare centers.
He continued, “Our curriculum director [Tonawanda Irie] has been really instrumental in getting that started. We want to really look at that birth to [age] 5 component on how we can get kids started reading at an earlier age.”
Irie also spoke on the development which is still in the works. “We’ve got books, materials that promote literacy, and literature for parents. We also have chromebooks on there (the bus) and hope to help not just early literacy, but adult literacy as well. From one end of the spectrum to the other end, we hope to impact literacy,” she explained. “Our hope is that we can partner with daycares and that at least twice a month, we can go out to the daycares and promote literacy by reading and giving out books. Then, every other Friday, we plan to park somewhere in the community to let everyone know that we are here as a resource.”
She shared that two retired teachers would be working in the bus — one as the bus’s driver and assistant instructor, and the other who will lead the bus’s activities. According to Irie, the bus most recently had bookshelves, seating, and an interactive panel installed as the project prepares to partner with the community. The plan is for the bus to be available during community events, such as the upcoming Real Squeal festival.
Educators are also working within the system’s elementary schools to ensure that students are receiving the best possible literacy curriculum. Each principal shared insight on their school’s preparation and literacy programs during the roundtable.
Lyons Upper Elementary School Principal Rhonda Stone informed the group that all certified teachers who have any interaction with third grade students have undergone literacy training. “Even our music and PE teachers, and our counselor, had to have science of reading training,” she said.
Stone added, “Kindergarten through 2nd grade [students at Lyons Primary School] started a Reading Horizons program [years ago], so we are now getting that group that was fully implemented in that. We will be carrying on what they began in 3rd grade. It incorporates the science of reading as well, but it’s a whole new program for us. We are going through all of the steps that the bill requires, but the bill still has some work to be done on it. We are scared to do too, too much because we want to make sure that we are doing everything correctly.”
Lyons Primary School Principal Tracy Mulkey added to this, commenting, “We are blessed in Toombs County to have already started requiring the components for reading that are included in the House bill.”
She continued, “Three years ago, we began the implementation of Reading Horizons, which is based on the science of reading. Our teachers have received professional development and a coaching model where we have had people from the program come in and work with our teachers and provide feedback to our teachers. We have seen a lot of success in this, and we have had student achievement improve in the area of reading because of this program. We are looking forward to seeing that continue on at the upper school in 3rd grade.”
Mulkey explained that additional literacy training had been provided to reading/ language arts teachers to help further equip them. “Our students are in very good hands with our teachers because they have received a wealth of training,” she emphasized.
“At Toombs Central, we are fortunate that the program we were already using – Reading Mastery – is approved to be used as far as the new bill. So, a majority of our teachers have been there for years, and are able to use curriculum that they were already using. We have 10 new teachers coming on, and they are going to have to learn that program, because it’s new to them.” Toombs Central Elementary School Principal Wendie Sikes remarked.
Sikes said that her school has a unique opportunity with literacy training, as an individual who worked directly with the legislation serves as one of the school’s trainers for the teachers. “It works to our advantage that he is right here for us to help us,” she added. “It’s just great because [the students] are getting [literacy education] from the beginning, and it just keeps rolling through the school.”
Waller shared additional information about the bill, explaining that one of the components which the legislation requires has already been utilized in all schools within the district. “For several years, we have done iReady screeners, which are formative benchmarks, for the last 5-6 years. Part of that law has benchmark screeners in it, but we’ve already had that in place that we do at the beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of the year.”
Waller noted, “To me, that is more important than our Georgia Milestone Assessment scores because that tracks the growth of each child and gives a prescriptive skill-based gap report of what that child can work on. It is an individualized instruction tool from those screeners that helps determine where that kid is. There are going to be many times that a kid might not necessarily achieve that summit assessment or milestone, but anyone can grow.”
The principals added to this, saying the benchmark assessments also help teachers and schools know how the students will do on the Georgia Milestones Assessments, informing them to better prepare for the test.
While the elementary schools focus on literacy, Toombs County Middle School Principal T.J. Mercer stated that his school is focused on improving safety within their walls. “One of the biggest things for us is the ability to have a school resource officer (SRO) at our school – that will be really good,” he said. “We have gradually done a little bit more and more each year for safety at the school. The middle school was not exactly the safest place; we found out two years ago that it was easy to walk down the halls if you wanted to. We set up glass barriers and a locking system, and this year, with the potential to get an SRO in there, I think that will ease a lot of apprehension for some of our teachers that became concerned when that happened.”
Waller also spoke on this. “The governor put in the state budget the opportunity for safety funding to be used for school resource officers, so we are in negotiations with the City of Lyons to provide SROs in our buildings to be an extra layer of safety,” he emphasized. “We are also adding an app called “School Dog,” that gives us the opportunity to record potential interior and exterior safety risks or hazards that may be then fixed through technology or maintenance at a moment’s notice.”
Meanwhile, at the Toombs County High School, Principal Marissa Morris said that administrators are continuing to make sure that students are best prepared for life after school. “The big focus at the high school is always student achievement because we are the ‘last stop shop’ prior to postsecondary education. We have a lot of facets and things going on, whether it’s Career, Technological, and Agricultural Education Plus that has recently rolled out, or others,” she remarked. “Tagging on to early literacy, all schools in our school system will eventually be rolling out new English Language Arts standards, so we are doing some training on that to prepare to incorporate those standards after the 2024-2025 school year. We are working to get those units ready and get some training from the state with that.”
She continued, “In addition to that, as far as academically, there is a big focus at the high school and the middle school on math. As you know, math is not like what it was when I was younger – there is a lot more required. There was a new rollout of state standards that we started last year, so this year we really want to hone in on what we need.”
Morris added, “One thing that we have adopted at the high school is a program called ‘Agile Minds.’ That is primarily focused on Algebra I, and it is an intensive program that will be great to have because high school is always lacking things. We had the training last week with two teachers that will run that yearlong math support group, and we are really excited. It’s along the lines – not the same company – of the scripted lessons with the homework embedded and all of the learning targets, just like another program [we previously used] was,” Morris remarked. “It will be great to use it as a tool and see what effect it has on our scores over time, and we are just extremely excited about it. We were blessed by a Board and people that work diligently with us to give us the funds to be able to have that.”
Middle School Principal Mercer also spoke, saying that Curriculum Director Irie is helping both schools implement new methods of boosting math curriculum. “We are going in the opposite direction of math; we are going to do a little bit more of traditional stuff, like things using pencil and paper. We want to get off the Chromebooks some, and we are excited about that change,” he summarized.
Waller remarked, “With the rollout of the new math standards, it’s all becoming math modeling now – it’s all about conceptual things and helping the students see the big picture as opposed to sitting down and learning times tables. That stuff is still essential, but it’s also becoming a little bit more creative and critical with your thinking. We feel that honing in on that will be helpful.”
He continued, “What we have been discussing throughout our district over the past few weeks is being very intentional about our execution. It is really easy to talk about what a focus may be, but what are the actual action steps behind that? What these principals are talking about at their schools, we are being very intentional about executing. I hope that we will see those results with our students. Again, we want to meet our students at whatever their level of success is and help them go farther with that.”
Another area which Principal Morris highlighted for the school year is an addition of a new class within the school. “We have construction – we added it last year in addition to our Heavy Equipment Pathway, but it was only part-time. Part-time teacher Charlie Hartley – who taught economics and construction for half a day – is going to come on full-time to lead that construction class. That will give those students who want to do construction and that pathway the opportunity to do that fulltime, so we’ve added that. In addition to that, the first course of construction ties on to the things learned with Heavy Equipment Pathway Instructor Tom Brodnax’s first course,” she explained. “In addition to that, John Sharpe has added some creative things at Southeastern Early College and Career Academy (SECCA) to incorporate some dual enrollment there to bridge some things in that resource and to give students more opportunities in the career academy.”
She continued, “High school had a stellar year in athletics last year. Things are up and rolling for this year – our band is out performing; our clubs are out and about doing things already. We are looking forward to another great year for our organizations and athletics. We are open 24/7 – something is always going on! We’re blessed to have all of those opportunities for our students.”
Toombs County Schools kicked off the school year on Friday, August 9, and reported that they had a wonderful first day and start to the school year.
