On Oct. 20, officials from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) interviewed school administrators, school faculty and members of the community to track the progress of the local board of education.
“This was a monitoring visit,” said Sorrells. “They didn’t really give us any formal feedback the day of the October visit, but we expect a formal response from them within the next week.”
The formal response will come in the form of a letter, said Sorells, and should give the board and school district insight on what the October interviews produced.
SACS will visit Polk County again during the spring and will determine to either lift the probationary status of all schools in Polk or pull accreditation.
Last March, SACS conducted the same interview series. From those interviews and other supporting data, SACS determined that the school board was in violation of governing policies and consequently placed all 11 schools in the county on probation.
The probation status went into effect for the 2004-2005 school year and ultimately means that the school board has one year to show their compliance with SAC’s policies of government or the school district’s accreditation could be lost.
Loss of accreditation for local schools could spell out big problems for graduating seniors, as most colleges in the South use this term of approval as a way to measure the quality of education a student has received.
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