MADISON, Ala. — Madison City Schools is kicking off a new school year with a new theme. "Our theme this year is empowering all students," Dr. Ed Nichols, Superintendent for Madison School District shares. "We really emphasize all and looking for ways to make sure that all of our students feel connected."
The Madison City School District is going 25 years strong and its continuing to build on its success. "You know, any time your district is named number one in the state and your schools are all in the top 2%, it's a pretty big challenge to repeat that every year," Nichols shares. "But our staff has worked very hard over the summer looking at new courses of study, looking at our testing scores and where we can make improvement, but I think that, you know, just going into the new year, expanding those opportunities."
With those expanded opportunities come expanded enrollment which the district is working hard to balance. "First of all, for us, it is always on our mind is enrollment," Nichols shares. "We're always for the history of our school district, which is this 25th year. We're always growing. So, anticipating new students and how that will affect class rosters. We're pretty good in staffing right now. We've had a great summer of staffing. The push here at the end is sometimes we have to adjust and add four or five units that we weren't thinking we would need. That means you have to split the class and it's never happy for mom and dad. I just, you know, we're really in the best interest if we can do that and I know it causes a little shake at home on those first few days, but just bear with us. and in the long run, that really will work better."
To help alleviate the mental strain for both teachers and students, there will be resources available. "We've had a longstanding partnership with the enrichment center to use tier three counseling for our students, and they can be referred to that," Nichols shares. "We also partnered with the enrichment center to provide counseling for our staff and so if our staff are having difficulty or challenges, they can reach out at no cost to them. We also added some additional counselors across the district where we felt the enrollment was such."
Also, on the minds of parents and teachers…safety. "we've got a crisis alert system. It won't be quite ready the first day due to construction projects, but the first few weeks of school will have that, and each teacher and staff member will have an alert badge that they could signal they needed assistance medically or they could lock down a school," Nichols shares. "We also are implementing and working through the process of adding cameras and rings at the front door to allow entrance. and so that'll take a couple of weeks into the school year just due to construction and getting those things done. we also have overt training that we're pushing out across the district, so there's several new upgrades for us and we also have safety personnel at every elementary school."