Monday Off for Bibb Students as Strategic Planning Begins | Education

Bibb County public school students will have no school Monday.

All teachers and every other school district employee are to be at the Macon Centreplex to officially kick off Superintendent Romain Dallemand's strategic planning process.

Chris Floore, director of public relations for the district, said more than 4,000 people, including hundreds of invited parents, business owners and other members of the community are expected to attend. They will form smaller groups where they will brainstorm goals for Bibb County schools for the next five years and ways to get there.

"We want the engagement of our entire community," said Floore, "because the effort it is going to take to improve our system, it's going to take more than teachers, more than principals, more than administrators and more than Dr. Dallemand. Its going to take the effort and the engagement and the will of every single person in this community to turn this around."

Dallemand has already been selling a few changes to the Board of Education and the community, including year-round school, teaching Mandarin and technology in addition to English, and allowing students to pick their own school.

The goal of these changes and the strategic plan is to help students compete globally and to reverse negative trends in area schools. For instance more than 700 students dropped out last school year, almost 500 more children were expelled, and almost 8,000 were suspended.

In total, that's 36 percent of Bibb county students who didn't stay in school last year.

"This is an opportunity to figure out what our students need," said Floore, "and how we can best meet these needs in the future."

The meeting starts at 8:30 Monday morning and lasts for 7 hours.