A well-known area journalist is leaving WCBI after more than two decades to join the staff at Columbus Municipal School District.
The CMSD board on Monday unanimously approved hiring Joey Barnes as the district’s public information officer.
Barnes is currently the news director for WCBI in Columbus. His new role in the district is effective Sept. 22 with an annual salary of $82,000.
“We’re definitely excited about him wanting to take on this challenge and be a part of (CMSD),” Interim Superintendent Craig Chapman said. “I think he has a lot of great ideas of things that he would like to do to help promote our district and shine a light on the great things that we’re doing.”
Intersession changes
The district is also adopting a new plan for its fall intersession this year in hopes of shoring up teachers and students’ skills ahead of state testing this school year.
The weeklong long break starting Sept. 29 will be focused entirely on providing professional development to early elementary teachers to prepare for assessments next year, rather than on student remediation or enrichment, as it has been in the past.
“This intersession will be fully for teachers, (providing) professional development (and) building their capacity to be able to support students when we prepare for the … spring accountability (testing),” Chapman told The Dispatch on Tuesday.
Presenting the plan to the board of trustees during a Monday meeting, Chapman said the fall intersession will be specifically for kindergarten through third-grade teachers, focused on phonics training to prepare for the third grade reading assessment in April.
In the past, CMSD intersessions provided remediation, through direct instruction, and enrichment, in the form of special interest camps, opportunities to students.
The new plan comes after past intersessions saw low student attendance and high operational costs, Chapman said.
It cost the district about $179,262 to operate its fall intersession last year, a roughly $36,000 decrease from the year before. Instructional expenditures, nutrition services and transportation were the largest expenses.
Without students present at the intersession this fall, Chief Financial Officer Holly Rogers said the district will save on instructional and nutritional expenditures during the intersession week, which respectively cost $144,152 and $14,140.60 last fall.
“It would be more cost effective, but it will also give us an opportunity to get all of our teachers on the same page with instruction,” Rogers told The Dispatch on Tuesday.
Because the week is excluded from the district’s 180-day school year mandated by the state, attendance is not required for students or teachers. Chapman said the district is discussing incentives for teachers who choose to participate in the fall intersession.
After school starts Oct. 20
Also in preparation for state testing, Chapman said the district has a renewed focus this year on after school academic support for students. Administrators have seen an increased interest in the program this year, he said.
“If we see a better participation … then this is a direction we want to be intentional about (taking) this year,” Chapman said. “We’ve done it sometimes the last couple of years, but it’s been based on (if) schools decided that’s something they wanted to do, and they’ve seen success with it.”
Starting Oct. 20, Chapman said the district will offer after school tutoring for third- and fourth-grade students, as well as to high schoolers who will be taking an end-of-course state assessment this December. It will continue through Nov. 20.
The focus will shift in the spring to target all students who will be state testing in 2006, Chapman said.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 30 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
