Superintendent seeks school tutoring program

By Preston Sparks | Staff Writer
Saturday, September 19, 2009

Community leaders, school officials and a police representative met Friday night to hear a nonprofit group's plan to offer after-school and summer school programs in Richmond County.

School Superintendent Dana Bedden told the group he feels strongly about the Building Educated Leaders for Life program and is seeking community support.

"We want to make this our extended day and extended year model," he said, adding "I'll sink or swim with this program. That's how much I believe in it."

The only after-school programs offered outside the normal school day are run by private tutoring companies. The free tutoring program is available only to qualified students in those schools that haven't made Adequate Yearly Progress for two consecutive years.

"We've got to do something different. We've done summer school in our traditional way and it just isn't happening," Dr. Bedden said.

Using an example of how some schools abroad operate for much of the year and for longer hours than American schools, Dr. Bedden said more needs to be done locally to offer children who need extra instruction the opportunity to receive it.

Carole Prest, a BELL official who was at Friday's meeting, said her group could tailor the after-school and summer school programs it manages to fit the Richmond County school system. Ms. Prest said BELL also seeks creative ways to get students interested in learning.

Ms. Prest said the program would be free to elementary and middle schools students who have been deemed a good candidate for further learning by a teacher or other school official. The first 300 students would cost about a half million dollars, she said. Her group would then like to grow the scholar base to about 1,500 in three or four years.

Officials are seeking grants, stimulus money and community donor support, which Dr. Bedden said would allow the system to "own" the program and not be so dependent on shaky federal and state funds.

Dr. Bedden said he would hope to at least have summer school programs through BELL begin in 2010, and possibly have after-school programs started in a few schools this school year.

He said a plus to having the school system offer such programs is that it would know what students need in instruction, something he said is a challenge as only privately-owned businesses offer tutoring outside the school system.

Reach Preston Sparks at (706) 828-3851 or preston.sparks@augustahchronicle.com.

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BELL BACKGROUND

BELL, Building Educated Leaders for Life, was founded in Boston in 1992 and has expanded to provide summer and after school programs to children in Baltimore, Charlotte, Detroit, Flint and New York City.

The group is mobilizing a corps of more than 1,000 certified teachers and trained tutors to educate more than 11,000 children. Locally, officials say teachers and tutors would be hired from the Augusta area. For more information, visit www.bellnational.org.