White Co. Schools To Participate In State Tutoring Program Next Year

White County schools aim to mitigate learning loss through a new program Tennessee Accelerating Literacy and Learning Corps.

Director Kurt Dronebarger said that the program provides grants for schools to pay staff and tutors to help students excel.

“Really what we’re going to try and do in white county is reach what we call those ‘bubble kids,'” Dronebarger said. “The kids that are right on the edge of being proficient, but maybe are not falling into how a normal tutoring or intervention program might be set up. So we’re going to try and reach those students and see if we can get them over the hump and get them into proficiency levels.”

Dronebarger said that the program is a five percent grant match requirement. He said that they plan on investing over half a million dollars to pay for both in-school faculty and employees from a tutoring service for students.

Dronebarger said that there was not a significant amount of learning loss in White County Schools. He attributes that to in-person learning last year.

“We were in-person,” Dronebarger said. “We took the first couple of weeks of school last year to start on a remote system just to get everybody used to the technology and the logistics of that but we were in person for the rest of the year and so we really think that helped our schools. WE were a level five district as far as growth was concerned and that was really commendable I think in a pandemic, but we certainly have a lot of room to go as far as achievement goes so that’s what we hope these types of tutoring programs with ALL Corps will help us do.”

Dronebarger said that White County Schools will implement the program in the next school year. He said they want to take time to thoroughly plan before starting.