State intervention, more addressed at final MPS meeting of 2019

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - It was a full house at Tuesday’s Montgomery Public Schools board meeting, the last meeting scheduled for 2019.

“This is a system where there’s so much to do and to get fixed,” said MPS Superintendent Dr. Ann Roy Moore.

The meeting took a reflective look back on this year’s successes and failures.

“I think as you can see tonight that our board is beginning to gel and to work together as a team, they’re becoming very cohesive. They may not always agree with each other, but they do it in a very processional, courteous and polite way,” said Moore.

But there’s still one big glaring failure: the fact that school system is under state intervention.

“Intervention is not normal. You know, you kind of have someone looking over your shoulder all the time,” said Moore.

While many of the financial issues of the intervention have been addressed, MPS is still considered under-funded compared to other systems around the state. Another concern: academics. Last month, 11 MPS schools were included on a list of the state’s lowest-performing educational institutions.

“We’re under intervention because of academics, so we’re moving with that. We’re getting better with that," said Moore. "Some of the things that were talked about under this particular strategy, a goal that Mr. Mitchell talked about, has to do with student achievement and how we are helping our teachers and principles learn how to move our students forward.”

Moving forward, Moore’s hope for the new year is to have the state intervention lifted as a sign the board’s hard work over the past year has paid off.

“We’re checking off all of the things that caused us to be under intervention in the first place. And so we worked really hard on our finances and we have a good grip on that now and so of course the financial reports have to be done monthly and then submitted to the state,” said Moore.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Moore was evaluated on her work thus far and board members gave her a score of 3.74 out of 5. When asked her thoughts on her score, Moore said she was okay with it and said there’s always room for improvement.

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