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Meeting will give parents a preview of Hall County school redistricting
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Hall County school officials plan to meet with parents of the students who may be affected by possible redistricting when the system’s new school complex opens in 2009 on Spout Springs Road.

At the meeting, school officials will present various redistricting options to affected parents.

"We want to get some public input on how we will use that space on Spout Springs Road," Superintendent Will Schofield said.

Schofield told the Hall County Board of Education on Monday of the meeting, set for Aug. 11 at the new Chestnut Mountain Elementary School.

The school board hopes to make a decision about the proposed redistricting by September.

No Child Left Behind

Although the state has not released its final list of schools that made adequate yearly progress, commonly referred to as AYP, Hall County school officials anticipate that five schools in the 33-school system will not meet the standard.

But there has been improvement, Schofield told the board.

"It has three schools off the ‘needs-improvement’ list," he said.

All seven of the system’s high schools, five of the system’s six middle schools and 16 of its 20 elementary schools met the requirements, and the district as a whole has been moved off of the needs-improvement list.

Adequate yearly progress is a measurement of school improvement adopted when President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law in 2002.

Schofield said the progress measurements can be skewed by the scores of a few, disadvantaged students.

The Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests scores of five special education students kept three of the system’s elementary schools — Lanier Elementary, Chestnut Mountain Elementary and Flowery Branch Elementary — from meeting adequate yearly progress, according to a report Schofield sent out Monday.

All types of students at Sugar Hill Elementary did not meet standards in four areas of mathematics.

At South Hall Middle School — the system’s only middle school not meeting the requirements — special education and English as a Second Language students did not meet standards in the reading and language arts portion of the test.

"Something is wrong with the system when five students can affect the status of entire schools," Schofield told the board.