On April 15, a team of teachers and administrators from around the state will visit all schools in the Carmel Clay school district and rate them to determine if they are an accredited school. This is all part of the AdvancED program, which is an accreditation system checking if school districts across the state are meeting certain standards and expectations, according to Assistant Principal Brooke Watkins.

“(The district goes) through it every five years, so it is part of our improvement process. This is the second time we have gone through this as a district process. Prior to that it was each individual school, and then the district adopted this,” Watkins said. “It’s just something we do every 5 years to make sure we are up to par and meeting standards as far as expectations from.”

According to Watkins, the administration had to create a report based on the surveys that students and parents took last semester before fall break. The team will review the report and then conduct a 45 minute interview with a group of 10 people consisting of parents, teachers and students. Afterward the team will spend the rest of their day going different classes around the school, spending 20 minutes in each one.

After the team evaluates all the schools in the district, they will create a report and submit it to the school board. The report will then be assessed by the board, who will then determine whether to reject or accept it. Based on the feedback of the team, the district will see how to continue to improve the school system, and meet the standards of students and parents.

As Watkins stated, “It gives everybody a voice in the process, and we don’t always hear from parents and students across the community, and across the school. It’s not necessarily to create new things, but what are we doing well and what are things we should continue with, are there gaps, are there missing things, and what we can do to improve.”