Bounds: ‘Make Certain Students Reach Standards’
By Steve Sanders, Laurel Leader-Call, Miss.
Aug. 2–Dr. Hank Bounds, Mississippi’s State Superintendent of Education, spoke to teachers and administrators of the Jones County School District Friday morning. He spoke to approximately 750-800 people in the recently completed auditorium at West Jones High School.
School personnel spent the morning hearing Bounds talk about high expectations of schools and listened to attorney Jim Keys speak about safety precautions teachers and administrators need to take concerning new technology.
Steve Thrash, Jones County School Superintendent, gave personnel a motivational talk for the new school year, which begins next week. Before he spoke to the group, he commented on the new auditorium.
“This building is fantastic,” he said. “Everybody’s excited about it; the enthusiasm is just really, really wild. We’re just very proud of it. We thank all our legislators and everyone who took part in preparing the monies to build these facilities.”
Similar facilities have been constructed at Northeast Jones High School and South Jones High School.
Keys, a Laurel native and 1967 graduate of R.H. Watkins High School, has worked with educators for 26 years and gives seminars concerning the dangers and liabilities the use of new technology, such as the Internet, emails and texting, by students and school personnel.
Bounds bragged on the Jones County School District before he spoke to teachers and administrators.
“This building is obviously state of the art,” he said. “I think we could make the argument that Jones County is the poster child for getting a bond issue passed. I’m real excited to be here in a community that really values public education.”
Bounds, a Hattiesburg native, talked about the future of education in Mississippi and “the things that we’re going to have to do to make certain our students reach national and international standards.”
“We (the Mississippi Department of Education) recently rebuilt our curriculum and rolled out a new assessment that accurately measures what student performance looks like,” Bounds said. “Now we can compare Mississippi’s boys and girls to boys and girls in the rest of the country. That’s critical because we have to understand that the boys and girls in Jones County are not only going to compete against other Mississippians for jobs and higher education opportunities, they’re going to compete with boys and girls from across this country.
“With that being said, we need to clearly understand where our students are today and what it is we need to do to instructionally in order to make sure that they’re prepared to compete with boys and girls from around the world.”
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Copyright (c) 2008, Laurel Leader-Call, Miss.
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