September 29, 2020
By KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT
Rutherford County Schools
Distance-learning parents will want to tune in to participate in a virtual Town Hall meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 30, from 5:30-6:30 p.m.
The latest Town Hall meeting will be broadcast via YouTube Live — https://youtu.be/m6eelyp0I1c — and shared across Rutherford County School’s Twitter and Facebook channels.
Director of Schools Bill Spurlock will be joined by Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Dr. Jimmy Sullivan along with the coordinators for all three grade bands — Dr. Kay Martin (secondary education), Barbara Powers (middle school) and Ann Haley (elementary) — and Jeannie Williams, instructional technology coordinator. The hour-long Town Hall will be moderated by Communications Director James Evans.
Parents may submit questions via the YouTube Live broadcast. The meeting will also be available as a recording after the live event concludes.
The meeting is meant to “give our parents and our community an opportunity to be able to ask questions about perceptions they may have about distance-learning and traditional learning and just see where we are as a school system,” Sullivan said.
In addition to sharing information, Sullivan said he and others feel it is important for them to listen to parents and stakeholders.
“My hope would be we all have a better understanding of where we are and where we’re going with looking at distance learning and traditional learning,” Sullivan said. “What are ways we can continue to get better.
“As a school system, we know we’ve improved a lot since the school year opened, but what are areas we could still improve? … With our school district being so large, we may not be able to have complete consistency about how things operate with distance learning across our district, (but) we should be able to have that within a school and some similarities across the grade band.”
While the goal is to eventually see all students return to traditional learning — “We know that kids learn best when kids are near their teachers and educators and around their peer groups” — Sullivan understands a group of students will be in need of “other options” as our community addresses the pandemic.
Rutherford County Schools are trying to expand those offerings and before parents make any decisions, Sullivan said, “let us have that opportunity to see what’s working and we can do to try to help make it better.”
The Town Hall can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/m6eelyp0I1c beginning at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2020.