Teacher denounces board member’s criticisms of Muscogee County School District

For the first time in memory, a Muscogee County School District teacher has publicly spoken during a board meeting and denounced a board member’s criticisms of the district.

Jacob Elliott, the magnet coordinator at Dimon Elementary Magnet Academy, didn’t name names in his four-minute speech during the public agenda portion of Tuesday night’s Muscogee County School Board meeting, but his point was clear.

He asked the board, “What have you done to make our schools better? I ask this question, because I get concerned a little bit with the things I read online.”

Elliott argued against judging schools based on their College and Career Ready Performance Index, the state’s measurement to determine how well schools and school districts are educating children and preparing them to be productive adults. He called the CCRPI “a system that a lot of people don’t know how it’s even put together and what goes into it to come up with that score.”

He asked whether board members make their assessments “without ever having set foot in the school? See, as a teacher, I’m not allowed to judge our students based on one score but the overall child. So, I’m here to ask, in order to continue moving our district forward, would you wander outside of your comfort zone, outside of your own district, and check out what’s going on at public schools, to know what’s happening in the district, to understand that you don’t represent just your own zone, but you represent the Muscogee County School District as a whole?”

Elliott declared, “There’s a lot of awesome things happening. … I just want you to know that before you think about denigrating a whole body of educators, a whole school filled with students, parents and a community doing their best. See, I believe, in order to make our district better, you should step out of your comfort zone and check out what’s going on at each school. And you’ll see the hard work that the teachers are putting in, the hard effort that the students are putting in, what the parents are putting in.

“I see some of the posts that some of the board members might put out there, and calling a school in this district horrible based on one score should not be tolerated. Thank you.”

Nobody from the board table responded to Elliott, but several folks in the crowd applauded as the board moved on to its action agenda.

This story was originally published February 22, 2017 at 8:15 PM with the headline "Teacher denounces board member’s criticisms of Muscogee County School District."