The 2003-04 school year in Gainesville and Hall County is shaping up to be one of new places and faces, continuing growth, higher accountability and more belt-tightening.

Some 26,500 students from Gainesville City Schools and the Hall County School System will start the first of 180 state-mandated days of instruction on Friday. And the year should be busy for both systems.

Gainesville is opening two new elementary schools; reconfiguring elementary grades; adding pre-kindergarten classes once again; implementing "programs of choice;" starting a uniform policy; and adding a battery of tests to measure student achievement.

"It has been a top-to-bottom realignment of our resources," said Superintendent Steven Ballowe.

Hall County, which opened last year with two new high schools and one new elementary, has its share of newness and challenges in 2003-04, as well.

South Hall Middle School joins Davis, West Hall and East Hall middle schools, as well as McEver Elementary, in requiring students to wear uniforms.

McEver also becomes a federal Title I school because of high poverty levels, a move that will result in federal funding for the school and closer scrutiny under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The county's Newcomers Academy, which provides intensive English instruction to elementary students new to the United States, particularly Latinos, will start classes at Riverbend and expand them at Jones. Classes will continue at Myers, Lyman Hall, Tadmore and McEver.

And new attendance zones, the subject of an intense debate early this year and in late 2002, go into effect for five North Hall elementary schools: Lanier, Mount Vernon, Riverbend, Sardis, and Wauka Mountain.

Focus is on learning

But through all its changes, which are largely the result of ongoing population growth, "we don't ever want to get away from our focus on student learning," said Dennis Fordham, Hall County's superintendent.

School officials began in June closely examining how the school system can ensure that it is reaching every student academically, he said.

Education is now fully immersed in an era of accountability, which relies in a big way on standardized testing as the measuring stick for student achievement.

Georgia schools particularly have felt the pressure in the No Child Left Behind Act and education reform approved under former Gov. Roy Barnes.

Starting this year, third-graders must pass the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests before promotion to the fourth grade. The promotion rule extends to fifth-graders in 2004-05 and eighth-graders in 2005-06.

Fordham said standardized testing tends to rely on the student's recall of facts, but that teachers need to guide students to a deeper understanding of what they are teaching.

It's a balancing act for schools.

"The question is how can we get the scores high enough without compromising that deeper understanding," Fordham said.

New for 2003-04 in Gainesville City Schools is a battery of tests known as "Pachyderm Assessments," a play on the system's Red Elephant mascot.

Teachers will test students at the beginning of every nine weeks on state-mandated objectives, and again at the end of the nine weeks on the same material.

"We can get immediate feedback of weak and strong areas among the students," said Mike Bull, the system's new assistant superintendent of instruction. "We will know if we need to work individually with students or in large groups."

The testing system also pressures teachers to perform. Administrators can look at the scores and determine which classes are making the most progress.

Emphasize the word "progress."

"We're not going to compare which teachers had the highest scores," Bull said. "They may have started at vastly different points with their students."

The system isn't seen as punitive, however.

"We need to recognize and validate our strong teachers who have taught for a long time and haven't gotten recognition," Bull said.

The new testing system is just part of an education overhaul in Gainesville City Schools, one that started with Ballowe's arrival in 2001 and was fueled by the system's expansion to five elementary schools.

City system grows

The system, with nearly 4,600 students, is expanding to seven schools with the addition of Gainesville Elementary and New Holland Elementary. New Holland will hold classes at Enota Elementary until its building is finished, tentatively set for November.

"We plan on being a community school in every sense," said Shawn McCollough, Gainesville Elementary's principal. "We will serve first our students, but secondly our community and our community's families."

The five elementary schools will serve kindergarten through fifth grade. Previously, no two elementary schools had the same grades, meaning a student could go to all three schools before reaching middle school.

Two pre-kindergarten classes funded by the Georgia Lottery will be started, with one at Fair Street Elementary and one at Gainesville Elementary. The system previously held the classes at Enota for three years, but ended them in 1999 because fast-growing Enota needed the space.

A voluntary uniform policy will be in place at all five elementary schools.

And for the first time in the system's history, parents will get to choose the elementary school they want their child to attend, regardless of the school's location. Each school has developed a special area of interest or academic focus.

"It's a whole new approach and I believe our approach is simple," Ballowe said. "Our goal is to nurture every child's dream to be a reality. And we must make parents an active partner in our schools."

Andre Niles, whose 10-year-old son, Thomas, will enter the fifth grade at Fair Street, said he believes that school choice allows parents to "have more of a hands-on (role) in the direction where you want your kids (to go."

"I think a lot of times we just want our kids to pass. But when we challenge them, there is so much more they can learn," said Niles, whose daughter, Lauren, will be a senior at Gainesville High.

Gainesville lawyer Jody Cooley, part of the City Board of Education that hired Ballowe, said he has supported the changes made in the system. He particularly applauds the move to schools serving kindergarten through fifth grade.

"It allows us to better monitor the progress of children in the system, especially the children and families new to our style of education," said Cooley, who has a child entering fourth grade at Centennial Elementary and another going into the sixth grade at Gainesville Middle.

"I think the challenges in front of us are how smoothly will the transportation go," he said. "I'm sure the system has done a lot of planning, but that first month should be very interesting."

Focus on finances

Another area that the school systems will watch closely is the state's financial condition. Both saw a drop in state funding this year and had to make deep cuts, freeze salaries and keep a close rein on hiring in the 2003-04 budget.

Fordham is worried about a repeat in 2004-05.

"I see another round of cuts from the state," he said. "Those in administration need to pay a lot of attention to that."

Many of the changes in the systems are physical.

The city is using revenue generated by the 1-cent sales tax for schools to pay for the new schools, which cost about $7.5 million each.

Also, the city system will use a no-interest bond issue to pay for $830,000 in renovations that took place this summer at the aging Fair Street and Enota elementary schools and another $380,000 to fix up Gainesville Middle in the coming school year.

Hall County is using 1-cent sales tax money to build 40 classrooms, work that will be finished in about a month at Lanier, Mount Vernon, Wauka Mountain and Flowery Branch elementary schools.

Sardis will have a new media center and expanded office and lunchroom space.

Air-conditioning units have been installed or will be soon in the previously uncooled gymnasiums at Wauka Mountain, Lula, Chestnut Mountain, McEver and Riverbend elementary schools. Wauka Mountain's system will be finished first.

The school system eventually plans to install air conditioning in all of its 19 elementary schools.

Lots of new faces

Also, Hall County has gone through both a changing of the guard and a reorganization.

The system has four new principals: Jackie Adams, West Hall High; Mary Elder, Sardis Elementary; Sarah Justus, West Hall Middle; and Laurie Stamsen, Myers Elementary.

And after longtime administrator David Massey retired at the end of the 2002-03 school year, school officials shuffled and added to its top management.

The system now has a director of middle school education, Jim Sargent, and a director of high school education, Cynthia Blakley.

Gary Stewart, who previously oversaw middle and high schools, is director of administrative services. And Lee Lovett, previously associate superintendent of business and operations, now is deputy superintendent.

Blakley brings to the school system a diverse background, including a stint at the state's Office of Education Accountability.

"I hope as we go forward in Hall County and we make decisions at the local level as to what kind of things are good for children in kindergarten through 12th grade, I can bring a new perspective to that (process)," she said.

For all its bureaucracy and education theory, schools are a place, however, where students look forward to the crisp fall air at football games, proms and dreaming of future plans and careers.

As the drum major for Flowery Branch High School, senior Bryant Courtney is looking ahead to playing in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, once in the Bands of America competition and possibly once in an Atlanta Falcons halftime show.

"I look forward to another good year with (the band)," he said.