Be There: School Board Appreciation Week - WTVM.com-Columbus, GA News Weather & Sports

This week is School Board Appreciation Week in Georgia and the Muscogee County School District is joining in on the celebration. 

We took a look at the school board and its role with the help of the board's chair.

All this week is your chance to thank a Muscogee County School Board Member, and there are nine in total elected to staggered 4-year terms. The Georgia School Boards Association is sponsoring the celebration. We caught up with Board Chair Rob Varner to see what he thinks.

"It's not something we put on the calendar, okay great School Board Appreciation Week coming up but it's a nice gesture," Varner said.

The board is broken into 8 districts plus one at-large, and they're responsible for about 33,000 students at the district's 64 schools and alternative centers and making sure policies are implemented.

Varner says public education is key to a city's viability.

"The community can live or die by the quality of education that comes out of this district," Varner

The board meets the third Monday of each month, unless it's a holiday, at the public education building on Macon Road. Varner encourages parents to Be There...by being active in their child's education.

There is evidence that shows early reading, early attentiveness to what's going on in the school, is the child doing well or poorly, being involved within the actual school, in the community of the school with other parents, certainly with the teachers and principals and such. All that leads to more positive outcomes."

Muscogee County is one of 180 elected boards of education in Georgia. School Board Appreciation Week ends Friday.

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