Several programs in the Coweta County
School System – or partnered with the school system – are moving
over the summer.
The Shenandoah Youth Science and technology Center is moving to
the Grantville Brown School, beside West Georgia RESA. West
Central Technical College’s GED/Adult Education programs are
moving back to the technical college campus at the Central
Educational Center. A new middle school alternative school
program is moving into the Maggie Brown school in Newnan.
The Coweta County School Board approved a renewal of the lease
of the Grantville Brown school building in Grantville to the
West Georgia Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA), at its
regular meeting on July 8.
West Georgia RESA – which is a state educational planning and
support agency supporting Coweta, Carroll, Harris, Heard,
Meriwether and Troup Counties – has leased the former Grantville
school building since 1998 from the system.
The new lease reserves space at Grantville Brown for other
school system uses – specifically, the space in the school’s old
multi-purpose gym can be used by the school system under the new
lease agreement with RESA.
Superintendent Blake Bass said that the school system will
convert the gym for use as classroom and office space to be used
by the Shenandoah Georgia Youth Science and Technology Center (GYSTC).
The Shenandoah GYSTC is moving to the location from its former
space at the State University of West Georgia’s Newnan Center.
The rapid growth in the Newnan Center’s undergraduate and
graduate programs has led to limited space for the GYSTC program
in recent years.
Shenandoah GYSTC is one of 14 GYSTC centers located throughout
Georgia, and is the oldest such center, opening in Coweta County
in 1990. It serves over 15,000 students each year in Coweta,
Harris, Heard, and Meriwether counties through regular
school-year fieldtrips and summer classes offering hands-on
science for students in grades K through 6, and teacher training
in science and technology.
Bass said that the center provides a the school system a
cost-savings in student field trips and teacher training
requirements each year by being located in Coweta County.
Offering the center space in the Grantville building will be a
help to the center, to the school system, and will be a benefit
to the city of Grantville, as well, since school students and
teachers from all over Coweta County and five other counties
will now visit the location, along with regional teachers served
by RESA.
In another move, the school system will locate its new
middle-school-aged alternative school to the Maggie Brown
building in Newnan. The new alternative program will break off
from the Winston Dowdell Academy alternative program, which has
served students in grades 7 through 12 in Coweta County middle
and high schools.
The high school alternative program will continue at Winston
Dowdell Academy under Dr. Peggy Guebert. The new middle school
program will serve only students in grades 6 through 8.
Principal Derek Pitts will establish the new program when it
begins this school year.
The new middle school program is meant to provide a more
academically and socially appropriate environment for
middle-school-aged students who are in need of an alternative
school, said Superintendent Blake Bass. The new setting will
separate middle and high school age students, and will allow
different strategies to be used to prepare middle schoolers to
return to a regular classroom setting.
Bass said that working with 6th through 8th grade alternative
school students in a separate alternative setting will better
help them avoid having to be placed in a high-school alternative
program later.
Because Maggie Brown was needed as classroom space for the
school, the current offices of the West Central Technical
College Adult Education/GED classes could not continue at the
site.
West Central Technical College and the Central Educational
Center (CEC) have provided classrooms at CEC on Martin Luther
King Drive in Newnan as space for the adult education services
in Coweta County.
CEC serves high school students throughout Coweta County, but
also serves adult students as West Central’s college campus site
in Coweta County. GED classes were previously located at CEC
before their move several years ago to Maggie Brown.
GED teachers and others located at Maggie Brown began moving to
CEC last week. They will reopen classes at CEC on Monday, July
14. The offices can be reached temporarily through the
770-254-2829 phone number, or by calling CEC at 678-423-2000. |
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