The Fulton County Chamber of Commerce hosted its first State of the Schools luncheon on Monday, Aug. 26, at the Fulton County Public Library’s Rochester branch. Chamber Executive Director Jillian Smith, right, did a question-and-answer session with Rochester Community Schools Superintendent Jana Vance, left, and Caston School Corp. Superintendent Angie Miller.

Text and Photos
By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

ROCHESTER — Community members got updated on successes and challenges at Rochester Community Schools and Caston School Corp. recently.

The Fulton County Chamber of Commerce hosted its first State of the Schools luncheon on Monday, Aug. 26, at the Fulton County Public Library’s Rochester branch.

Chamber Executive Director Jillian Smith did a question-and-answer session with RCS Superintendent Jana Vance and CSC Superintendent Angie Miller.

One of the questions Smith asked was: “What do you consider the biggest success of your district last year and how did it impact students, staff and the community?”

Vance noted more students are taking college courses while at Rochester High School.

“Sixty-one percent of our graduating class took higher education courses while at Rochester schools,” she said. “There were 1,221 college credits last year alone, and 405 different college courses were taken during that time.”

Vance said the school has added a commercial driver’s license course, with students able to “get behind the wheel and complete their CDL … starting in January 2025” if they are at least 18 then. The public should also be able to take their CDL through the school corporation next year.

Vance added other positives were that “over 90%” of the school district’s third graders passed the state IREAD-3 test last year, and enrollment increased, which “can be both a blessing and a curse when you’re looking at space.”

Miller said students in her school corporation completed “over 400 credits for our dual-credit classes” last year.

“Most of our courses that we offer through state (colleges), kids are guaranteed credit,” she said.

“We’ve had a huge increase in enrollment. We’re looking at over 25% (in transfers to the corporation) right now,” Miller added.
Smith also asked about recent school corporation challenges.

Miller noted the free and reduced lunch rate in her district has grown.

“I think this is our whole area. The need is just greater, and with the students that are in those situations comes a lot of challenges, both just living day to day and the education,” she said.

Vance noted the corporation’s English Language Learner population “has doubled in less than a year.”

“So, strategically that is important in regards to the education that we’ve deployed to them,” she said. “We’ve been blessed to hire a couple of multilingual instructional assistants that are able to help in regards to translation and communication. I will say that we are constantly pushing out our flyers in Spanish as well.”

“We have a new Director of Special Services, Lukas Schoenhals, and he’s doing a great job of providing monthly support groups for our ELL students and their families, helping them feel welcome, understand our district as well as the community as a whole, but we anticipate that number to continue to grow throughout the course of the school year,” added Vance.

Both Vance and Miller said a continuing challenge is people not stopping for school buses when their stop arms are extended.

“We have had multiple bus stop arm violations already (this year), especially on the state highways, and we just don’t understand,” said Miller. “Our bus drivers … sometimes multiple times (a day will) call those in.”

“We have cameras on those stop arms,” she added. “I don’t know what we can do to people to get them to stop. We had a tragedy in this community, and it’s upsetting … The problem is not taken care of.”

Vance noted Columbia Elementary School Principal Jason Snyder, who was at the luncheon, “can attest to this.”

“There is nothing more frightening than when you are sitting in your office monitoring the radio traffic before school and after school and when you hear the panic in a bus driver’s voice because (someone’s) just passed a stop arm,” she said. “We were running one a day for the first four or five days of school.”

Community members listen at the State of the Schools luncheon on Monday, Aug. 26.