Jeff Bergosh Blog: Escambia County School District Receives Accreditation from AdvancED

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I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Escambia County School District Receives Accreditation from AdvancED

Today marks the end of a long four day period in the Escambia County School District. At an exit interview held this afternoon at the Hall Center, a team of 9 Education Specialists from AdvancED, an accreditation company that serves school districts around the country and also all DoD schools worldwide, informed the district that we are to be accredited for a five year period.

Behind the scenes and prior to today, this team from AdvancED had conducted interviews with the following district personnel:

5 Board Members

104 Administrative Employees

117 teachers

19 Support Employees

117 Parents and community stakeholders.

Additionally, this team toured ten district schools and visited 67 classrooms. The AdvancED team conducted an intensive review of the districts policies and procedures, then conducted random tests to determine if the district was doing what it says it is doing.

Following a brief overview PowerPoint, the assembled members of the district leadership team were given the news that the Escambia County Schools would be recommended for accreditation. Along with this news, we were commended for four distinct areas:

1. dramatic rise in school level grades over the last ten-year period
2. multiple high quality program offerings
3. highly effective superintendent
4. effective, systematic and systemic strategic planning process

One required area of additional oncentration and focus was given:

1 Identify, adopt, and implement alternative, innovative, non-traditional and where possible, research validated methods to increase participation of parents of under represented community groups in the school system.