4 White County Schools Named Reward Schools

Four White County Elementary Schools being honored as reward schools by the Tennessee Department of Education for their improvement in TCAP scores.

Cassville Elementary, Doyle Elementary, Findlay Elementary, and Northfield Elementary received the award. White County Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said the achievements come from the hard work teachers have put in and the investment that has been made into education.

“I think over the past few years there has been really an emphasis as the state government has injected more funds into schools,” Dronebarger said. “There has been more focus not just from the school side but from the community side. Parents are being more involved in their student’s education and I think we are seeing changes made inside and outside of school that are paying off.”

Dronebarger said this is not the first time the county has had multiple schools become reward schools. Dronebarger said the school system nearly had a few more schools become reward schools.

“We were right there, we had some schools that missed it by one-tenth of a point and so that is their incentive to dig a little deeper and roll up their sleeves and they will be working hard a that,” Dronebarger said. “We have some of our schools that haven’t had that designation in a while and some that had it and missed it this time but as a district, we were one-tenth of a point away from being an exemplary school district.”

The school system was rewarded with a sum of $350,000 in TISA funding for their improved performance. Dronebarger said the system will study the best use for the funding in the upcoming year.

“When we get to the end of the fiscal year as in May or June we’ll see what money might be left over that we might be able to do some extra things with that maybe we didn’t plan for otherwise.

The school system was also scored as a TVAAS level five school district. Dronebarger said he is excited to see that the school system is continuing to perform at a high level.