Whitfield County Schools to receive $11.5 million from CARES Act 2

Published 5:00 pm Saturday, January 16, 2021

Whitfield County Schools expects to receive $11.5 million in fiscal year 2021 from the second federal CARES Act allocation, said Superintendent Judy Gilreath.

“We didn’t want to talk about what to do with this money until we knew what we were going to get, but we may use some of it for technology needs (and/or) to hire extra staff,” Gilreath said.

CARES is short for Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security. The fiscal year ends June 30.

Technology

Tim Shaver, Whitfield County Schools’ director of technology, briefed school board members on his department during a board meeting this week.

The technology department supports more than 16,000 education devices — double the 8,000 devices it supported in 2015 — with 10 full-time technicians and one part-timer, Shaver said. The department also built a network and server design that allowed the system to avoid replacing aging school and security camera servers at schools — which equates to $450,000 in savings every five years — while also increasing security video storage from five days to a minimum of 25 days per school.

The department has upgraded cybersecurity to protect against attacks, Shaver said. Among the changes, the department has “firewalled off” the human resources and finance departments from the rest to have more control over who can access those systems, and purchased Google Enterprise, which provides the department the ability to isolate and address infected emails and Google drive files.

Construction updates

The new Westside Middle School gym was completed last month, and students are currently using it, Gilreath said. “There’s still one thing we’re waiting on, a handicap-accessible door.”

“It’s not required, but we want it,” she said. “We’ve ordered it, but we don’t have it, yet.”

A drainage issue at the new Valley Point Middle School, which opened for the 2020-21 academic year, was rectified during the holiday break.

“The biggest thing (at Valley Point was) the sewer retrofitting,” Mike Ewton, assistant superintendent for operations and student services, explained last month.

The new North Whitfield Middle School, slated to open for the 2021-22 academic year, remains “on track,” Gilreath said. “It’s looking good.”

Year’s first meeting

The school board members set meeting dates for the year. The board will continue to meet at the system’s central office on the first Monday of each month with the exception of July (will meet on July 12) and September (Sept. 13) this year, with work sessions at 5:30 p.m. and meetings at 6:30 p.m.

Bill Worley was reelected as chairman of the board, while Jamie Johnson was elected as vice chairman. The board also officially accepted a new member, Carolyn Weaver, who replaces Tony Stanley as the District 3 representative. Weaver was a longtime administrative assistant to the superintendent prior to her retirement from that position on Dec. 1, 2019, while Stanley opted not to run for a third four-year term.

The board members celebrated being named a 2020 Georgia School Boards Association Exemplary Board.

The recognition program is “designed to showcase best practices in school governance and leadership,” recognizing “good school board governance to foster educational community cultures in order to advance student learning and achievement,” according to the association. “The GSBA Governance Team Recognition Program was developed by Georgia superintendents and board members based on the state board of education’s standards for effective governance to recognize exemplary leadership, (and) in 1998, the Georgia School Boards Association was one of the first school board associations in the nation to develop a program of standards for local boards of education.”

Prekindergarten registration is scheduled for March 23-25 at the Mack Gaston Community Center, with sessions from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on opening day, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the second day, and 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the final day. Last names beginning with A-H are asked to register on the 23rd, last names I-R the following day, and last names S-Z on the last day.