The Board of Education met to discuss the tentative calendar for the 2026-2027 school year at their monthly work session on Thursday, February 27th, 2025. The board also highlighted Mill Creek Elementary School (MCES) and heard from some of their teachers and administration.
Mill Creek Elementary School student Harley Grant led the room in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Chair of the Board, Elizabeth Williams, moved to amend or adopt the agenda. Superintendent Charles Wilson recommended that the board adopt the agenda as presented. The agenda was adopted unanimously.
School Spotlight
Mill Creek Elementary School was the spotlight school at this meeting. Principal Jennifer Wade opened the presentation with the school's vision.
"Our vision is to create a school that fosters dreams and provides the opportunities to fulfill those dreams," Wade said.
Interim Assistant Principal Nicole Riggs and the school improvement specialist, Meagan Hendrix, talked about GMAS data, i-Ready data, and teacher clarity. Hendrix shared that there has been significant growth in tier-one students. The domain that has seen a lot of growth is phonics.
"We went from 8 percent of our students being on grade level in the beginning of the year to 18 percent of our students being on grade level in the middle of the year," Hendrix said.
Second-grade teacher Traci Hart explained that MCES's first goal is to increase their CCRPI overall ELA percentage. To do that, they have implemented the Jan Richardson guided reading framework. Their second goal is to increase math content mastery by using teacher clarity.
Assistant Principal Scott Chapman explained that MCES's third goal is about climate.
"When you come into Mill Creek, we want to make sure that everyone recognizes that the emphasis on learning, that our Mustangs know how to be well behaved while they're there," Chapman said.
Kindergarten teacher Angela Monahan attributed the growth in phonics to UFLI.
Board member Lannie Lanier gave a shout-out to the second-grade teachers and how hard they have been working.
Work Session
There was no public participation, so next, the board moved into their work session.
The board looked at an idea for the 2026-2027 academic school year calendar and engaged in a preliminary discussion of the calendar. They aimed for intentionality and balance in both semesters.
With designated makeup days, the board discussed which semesters the makeup days should be intended for. This past year was used as an example. The weather left Bulloch County Schools with around 14 days to make up.
"Anything that's threatening our instructional time with students is a threat to their potential progress," Superintendent Charles Wilson said.
The number of pre-planning and personal days for teachers was discussed.
Seven days are set aside for teachers to have before students come back to school. Lanier mentions that veteran teachers don't need that many days, but board member Donna Clifton says new teachers may still need those extra days.
The first semester was set for 88 days, and the second was set for 90. The board discussed a way to make the semesters balanced with 89 days in each. If one of the days in the Fall semester was changed to an instructional day, and a day in the Spring semester was changed to a professional development day, then the semesters could be balanced.
If a student's 'work week' is only 2 days, then attendance is usually low.
An update was given about the testing schedule for elementary and middle schools. The amended testing calendar was approved to push back windows for testing toward the end of the school year. The retest window would be the first week of June, but it regains 10 instructional days before testing.
The board did not feel a need to move into executive session.
The board approved the personnel recommendations as presented, and the work session was adjourned.
