Hall school official applauds state ed board

GAINESVILLE - Hall County's head of teaching and learning Monday applauded the state Board of Education's decision to allow schools flexibility in teaching math.

With state board approval, four separate traditional courses would be offered to students struggling with integrated math; Dr. Eloise Barron said students and the teachers, in fact, have been struggling.

"It complicates the lives of students and teachers," Dr. Barron said."Teachers say if we cover all of the math in the integrated course then we leave students behind. If we stay with where the students are and make sure they're all learning the math we don't get through the course and therein lies the problem with integrated math."

Dr. Barron said the integrated approach sounds good but it has not been practical with too much content put in the courses and there's also difficulty with students moving into the state and moving from here and going to another state.

"We don't know where to place those students and other states don't know where to place our students because they're not in traditional courses," she said.

According to Dr. Barron, Hall County would continue to teach integrated math to give the system time to align with traditional courses, and then teach either integrated or traditional math beginning in 2013.

"It does not make sense to change our math curriculum in 2011-2012 until we get that alignment in place so that we have the common standards and then is when you shuffle those courses and either teach integrated or traditional," Dr. Barron added.

LOW FUEL PRICE

How would you like to pay a $1.17 gallon for gasoline instead of $3.48, Monday's average price in Georgia?

That's what the Hall County School System expects to pay per gallon for LP gas for its new school buses, the only ones in Georgia running on LP, according to Operations Director Jewel Armour. Armour told school board members Monday night he's getting a rebate on $1.67 a gallon for the fuel and that brings the price down.

"You get a bid price and then Clean Fuels U.S.A. will rebate us 50 cents a gallon for fuel, we use LP fuel," Armour said. "I'm excited about the savings."

Armour said LP is 20 percent less efficient than diesel but the price well offsets the difference... diesel costs just over $3 a gallon.

"It's probably a mile per gallon less mileage, but you offset it with the cost plus you have no emissions, basically hardly any emissions," Armour added.