Tara Martin, Supervisor of Instruction and District Assessment Coordinator for Glasgow Independent Schools, speaks to the Glasgow Independent Schools’ Board of Education on Monday, Feb. 18, 2021.
(WCLU NEWS FILE PHOTO)
GLASGOW, Ky. — The Glasgow Independent School Board met in regular session Monday evening.
The first item on the agenda was to recognize Todd Garrison for his induction into the 2021 Kentucky Academic Hall of Fame for his work as head coach of the Academic Team for the past decade.
“Having a board, superintendent and principal who have been so supportive and people don’t just have that, but I’ve had it for ten years,” Garrison said. “It just keeps getting better. I love it and I’ll probably keep doing this until I drop dead.”
However, the biggest item on the agenda was the academic assessment data that was released last month for the Glasgow Independent School District. The Covid-19 pandemic caused learning losses throughout the state due to mandates and online learning.
Glasgow students, however, scored higher than the state average in reading and writing. While that is great news to receive after such a challenging year and a half, Tara Martin, Supervisor of Instruction and District Assessment Coordinator for Glasgow Independent Schools, says there is always a way to get better.
“I think each school is going to take this information and really focus on the areas where needed improvements are,” she says.
One specific area that students struggled was science. Martin believes that is a subject where hands-on learning is far more beneficial in regard to student engagement and retention, something the school system lacked due to circumstances like online-learning and social distancing protocols.
Fortunately, with case numbers beginning to decline, the number of people within the community getting vaccinated, and hopefully school systems soon returning to permanent in-person learning, Martin is confident that the school district will score above the state average in these subjects as well and, according to her, the students, faculty, and staff should be commended for navigating their way through the pandemic to continue learning and teaching.
“The students, administration and the teachers should definitely be praised for all of their hard work,” she says.
The Glasgow Independent School Board will meet again next month. The date and location have not been released.
