AdvancED upgrades Bibb school district’s accreditation status

After putting the Bibb County school district on notice two years ago, the accrediting agency AdvancED has boosted the district’s accreditation status from “warned” to “accredited.”

“This is great news from AdvancED,” Superintendent Curtis L. Jones said. “It demonstrates the hard work by the Board of Education and district staff since AdvancED’s visit in 2013 -- work that has put us on track to exceed expectations.”

During a review in May 2013, AdvancED gave the school board two years to improve on a handful of deficiencies found within the school system.

Those areas included: governance and leadership; teaching and assessing for learning; and resources and support systems. Bibb’s worst-scoring area came in governance and leadership.

The accrediting group handed down a warning along with a requirement to show proof of progress­ -- within two years -- in those lacking categories.

“The district leadership has been very diligent,” Mike Bryans, the AdvancED director, said. “They have provided a detailed response regarding each of those required actions.”

Board members Wanda West and Jason Downey made up the committee to address the issues the accrediting agency had highlighted. The board created a “continuous improvement plan” to show the progress it had made, as well as what was left to be done.

Besides that plan, board members also created and adopted a governance handbook, which was based on a handbook created by the DeKalb County school system after DeKalb had similar issues with AdvancED.

The board voted unanimously on April 14 to submit both the improvement plan and governance handbook to AdvancED.

Next, Bryans said, the district will have an opportunity to sustain the strategies it outlined in its plan until AdvancED’s next review sometime during the 2017-18 school year.

This story was originally published July 9, 2015 at 11:42 AM.