In January, Athens City Schools joined all the public school systems across the state to celebrate School Board Member Recognition Month and honored local board members for their commitment to Athens and its children.

“It takes strong schools to build a strong community, and these men and women devote countless hours to making sure our schools are helping every child learn and achieve at a higher level,” said Superintendent Trey Holladay. “They make tough decisions every month and spend many hours studying education issues and regulations in order to provide the kind of accountability our community expects.”

The key work of school boards is to raise student achievement by:

• Creating a vision for what the community wants the school system to be and for making student achievement the top priority;

• Adopting policies that enable the system to achieve its goals;

• Ensuring progress is measured to be sure the systems goals are achieved and students are learning at expected levels;

• Being accountable for their decisions and actions by continually tracking and reporting results;

• Aligning the system’s resources – human and financial – around its improvement goals;

• Creating a safe, orderly climate where students can learn and teachers can teach;

• Forming partnerships with others in the community to solve common problems; and

• Focusing attention on the need for continuous improvement by questioning, refining and revising issues related to student achievement.

“School board members give the citizens of Athens a voice in education decision making,” Holladay said. “Even though we make a special effort to show our appreciation in January, their contribution is a year-round commitment.”

The members of the ACS Board of Education are Russell Johnson, board president; Beverly Malone, vice president; and Tim Green, Scott Henry, Shannon Hutton, James Lucas and Jennifer Manville.

Board attorney Shane Black, while not a member of the board, is an integral part of the board of education team. ACS also recognizes Black for his contributions and service.

Schools across ACS showed their appreciation to board members throughout the month of January by hosting special lunches, sharing gifts and hosting school visits.