All county, city schools meet state AYP standards

Franklin County and Russellville City school officials are breathing a little easier after a report released on Thursday showed each school in both school systems met federal standards set out by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
The Alabama Department of Education released the Accountability Reports for 2011-2012 on Thursday and the reports showed all area schools met their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) mark, which means 100 percent of the required goals were met.
This includes the four schools in the Russellville City School System, all schools in the Franklin County School System and both school systems as a whole.
Russellville City Superintendent Rex Mayfield said their school system has made their AYP marks since they were put in place, and he gives most of the credit to the teachers in the system.
“I am extremely proud of our teachers for a job well done,” Mayfield said. “They work tirelessly to make sure our students are prepared for testing and that they are learning the material. They do an outstanding job and go way beyond what is expected of them.”
Mayfield said the parents of the students also contribute to the success in the classroom.
“The parents definitely play a role by helping their child in the learning process and by being supportive of the teachers. I appreciate the fact that we have so many parents who value education.”
The news was particularly good for Franklin County Superintendent Gary Williams since the Franklin County School System and Red Bay High School failed to meet the AYP marks for 2010-2011.
“This is the result of a lot of hard work by our teachers, administrators and staff,” Williams said. “There was a tremendous effort to raise our scores and our graduation rates this past year.
“We set goals that we knew we wanted to make, and we are very happy the hard work and dedication paid off.”
Williams added the good news is especially important going into a new school year.
“It’s a morale boost for our teachers to be able to go into this new school year and not be classified as being in school improvement,” he said.
“But as excited as we are at this great accomplishment, it’s never a complete load off your shoulders because you have to keep working hard to maintain those standards.
“We can’t rest on this year’s good results. We’ll just have to keep improving.”