Looking back on 2008, the Carroll County Public Schools Division selected 10 achievements and instances as most noteworthy heading into a new year.

At the Jan. 13 meeting of the Carroll County School Board, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Strader Blankenship presented the list with brief comments on each.

Nine out of 10 Carroll County Schools are fully accredited by the Virginia Department of Education.

“We had one school that was very close to getting there,” Blankenship said. “We feel they are working hard.”

Carroll County Public Schools are fully accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

“Last year, we had a visiting team come in and do a districtwide accreditation process,” Blankenship said. “We are fully accredited as a system as well as all 10 schools.”

Seven of 10 schools met the Federal No Child Left Behind act of yearly progress.

“There are 319 possible benchmarks that have to be met for the school system and all 10 of the schools,” Blankenship said. “We met 314 of the 319.”

Carroll County Public Schools’ professional and paraprofessional staff met highly qualified status. In all, 99.6 of professional staff meet that status and 100 percent of the system’s paraprofessional staff is highly qualified.

Carroll County Public Schools parents and students save on college tuition through dual enrollment choices. Blankenship noted that 376 students receive 2,215 dual enrollment credits at Carroll County High School and nine students received 138 dual enrollment credits at the regional Southwest Virginia Governor’s School.

“In community college dollars, that saves our parents $190, 946,” Blankenship said. “If you look at four-year institutions, that figure is closer to $565,896. That’s quite a savings for parents. Being a parent who was a beneficiary of those savings, I can tell you that program is excellent.”

Carroll County Public Schools created new communications links in 2008. Blankenship noted that Wired Road is available at all schools but St. Paul. The School Reach telephone alert system is in implementation. All of the school Web sites and system site are updated and there was a system for student records “Power School” implemented most recently, on Jan 1.

“Any time you have the implementation of a new piece of software, there are going to be some rough edges to it, but this was particularly smooth considering what we were asking of the people and the system,” Blankenship said. “Now we are doing all of our attendance, getting a schedule online and grades. In the future, our parents will have a portal where they can go online and see a student’s grades, discipline, attendance. We’re looking forward to that and giving parents another option to having much quicker communication about what’s going on with their child.”

The school system completed the Reading First Targeted Assistance grant. Through the grant, Carroll purchased materials and supplies, provided staff development and paid for visitation by authors. One of the larger items accomplished through the grant was a conference Carroll hosted in Wytheville. Carroll provided services to seven other counties through the grant.

Carroll continued responsive instruction training to meet the academic needs of all students.

“In the old days, you waited until a student failed and then you tried to help them,” Blankenship said. “The purpose of responsive instruction is, you find out through benchmark testing throughout the year, where a student is and if he is having problems, you go in and try to remediate. We’re in the process of implementing that throughout the system.”

Carroll received a radius emergency bandwidth grant from Homeland Security to train staff in emergency communications and to help rewrite crisis management plans.

Carroll County students received industry certification.

“A ot of people don’t realize we are increasing the number of certifications that our kids come out of school with, particularly from the technical area,” Blankenship said. “We had 185 students at Carroll County High School receive industry certification and credentialing by completing technical courses and the tests involved. That’s a 41 percent jump over the 2006-2007 school year and it’s another way we’re preparing our kids for when they get out of school for the process of going to work or going to school.”