Sharing community perspectives
On Oct. 3, 2023 a follow-up meeting about school safety in Clarke County schools was held in the media center at Cedar Shoals High School. Another one was held at Clarke Central the following day. The goal of this meeting was to get more community members perspectives and ideas. Unlike the last meeting on Sep. 5, the attendees split up into small groups to discuss their concerns and ideas for solutions.
The audience included a mix of district personnel, school staff and parents. With an attendance of about 30 people, superintendent Dr. Robbie Hooker expressed his desire for more people to attend.
“I would love for this room to be filled with individuals who are concerned about the schools,” Hooker said.
Each person was given a list of questions to discuss with their group members. The questions were mostly split up by the person’s relationship to Clarke County schools (meaning students, families, school staff, etc.) with one person from each table recording the discussions. After a certain amount of time in discussion, one person from each table summarized the main points of what they talked about for the whole room and then notes were taken.
Many of the conversations focused less on topics such as weapons and more on classroom behavior and bullying.
“I did hear a parent who was frustrated and walked out of the meeting and alleges that his child has been bullied and nothing has been done,” Hooker said.
Despite difficulties like this, Hooker hopes open discussion with parents will help lead to solutions.
“We will move toward solutions. How can we offer better services at our schools? What training do we need to provide for our staff to assist with this?” Hooker said. “We have work to do and it starts here by listening to the intimate concerns of the parents.”
Wendell Byrd attended the meeting. He contracts with the school board as a part of the Helping You Prepare for Excellence (HYPE) program. Byrd, as well as a few others, communicated that he thinks there needs to be more cooperation between different people in the community.
“All I know is that we just all need to just continue to build relationships: with the community, the parents and with teachers,” Byrd said.
Like Hooker, Byrd would like to see more community involvement and participation in these meetings.
“We (need to) continue with meetings like this. And try to find ways to bring more of the community and students out together so we can resolve this. Because here we have more teachers and staff than we do community. And so I would love to find ways to bring more community involvement into these meetings,” Byrd said.
Another community conversation on school safety will be held on Nov. 8 from 6-7 p.m. at the CCSD administrative building.
