Dist. 2 School Updates,Goals Ready for New School Year
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Anderson School District 2 is counting down the days until school starts Aug. 6. The budgets are passed, roofs are repaired, teachers hired, and every hallway begins to feel slightly more alive with anticipation. Jason Johns, the superintendent, said the district’s latest budget was shaped by the usual pressures — unfunded mandates, teacher retention, and the delicate art of balancing ambition against revenue — but managed, in the end, to avoid a tax increase.
That no-tax-increase part is a key achievement. Johns said the district had to draw on fund balance to make the numbers work, while also absorbing state-required costs that are not fully funded, including a mandated raise for bus drivers and a required step increase for all employees. Teachers, on average, will receive a 4.1 percent raise, which Johns said is both a cost-of-living adjustment and a recognition that keeping good people in the profession is becoming harder, not easier.
The district’s answer to that challenge has been, in part, stability. Johns said teacher turnover remains among the lowest in the state — less than four percent over the last five years — which he credited to the district’s culture and the fact that, once people arrive, they tend to stay.
This year also brings a new principal at Belton Elementary School, Lisa Ashley, whose background in special education and gifted and talented programs suggests the district is looking for someone comfortable with both ends of the student spectrum. The district has also brought its grounds crew in-house, a move Johns said is both practical and symbolic: in a small district, he said, the front yard of each school is part of the district’s public face.
Dist. 2 serves seven schools, just under 4,000 students, and just under 500 employees, including roughly 370 certified teachers. That scale gives the district a kind of intimacy that larger systems often lose, where people know which school is having roof work, which campus is getting new track paving, and which staff member has just moved into a new office.
Summer is also when all of that maintenance happens, and this summer is no exception.
Belton Elementary’s track is being repaved, while Marshall Primary is getting a new roof, which is close to completion. Belton Middle School is scheduled for a roof replacement, and Honea Path Middle School will receive work on its switchgear, mechanical systems, and roof. Johns said the district will also present a long-range facility plan in the fall, one that will encompass all seven schools and lay out a timeline for addressing infrastructure needs across the system.
The failed referendum asking for a new consolidated middle school did not end the discussion of middle-school needs, it simply shifted it back to the buildings already in use. Johns said both middle schools will receive safety upgrades, including protective glass at the front entrances, and all schools now have access controls on exterior doors. The point is keeping doors from being propped open, keeping keys from circulating too widely and of knowing who is in the building at all times.
Academic priorities are following a similar logic of steady refinement. Johns said the district’s main instructional focus this year will be middle-school math, an area where reading has already seen substantial gains, but math has not advanced at the same pace. K-through-eighth grade reading scores have risen to district highs, and third through eighth grade math and English language arts scores continue to move upward, but the district still sees math as the place where it can make its next serious gain. The latest state data, he said, should reflect that trajectory, along with a likely very strong graduation rate at BHP High School and historic U.S. history end-of-course scores.
Top history scores, Johns said, were particularly satisfying because two teachers — one a veteran of nearly three decades and one brand new — produced almost identical results, a small fact that he took as evidence of a collaborative district culture rather than isolated success. It is a story of achievement often told as a communal one: one classroom’s best practice becomes another’s, and one teacher’s strength becomes part of the district’s collective muscle.
The district is also changing how it uses technology. The district plans to move to a new diagnostic tool for kindergarten through eighth grade in English language arts and math, one that is computer-based for assessment but grounded in direct instruction for remediation and small-group intervention. The goal is to reduce screen time and return more classroom time to face-to-face teaching, a small correction that reflects a broader unease with letting software become the main event.
Outside the classroom, the district is trying to keep school life important. Johns said Coach David Crane is the new head football coach, and the team has been working through the summer with strong participation. Band remains active at both middle schools and the high school, and the district will host the 3A Upper State competition this fall, an event that fills the campus with schools from across the state. The choir, meanwhile, is preparing for a trip to Europe in two years, which gives the district’s arts program a suitably grand horizon.
In the fourth year of a modified school schedule, Johns said the community has adapted well. The shorter summer has become more manageable, and the periodic breaks during the year give families room to breathe, travel, or simply reset. With the first day of school a month away, teachers are already back in the buildings, testing floors, moving furniture, and meeting with one another in the way districts do when they are trying to look calm while preparing for the annual return of children.
Johns said the deeper identity of Dist. 2 is less about any one initiative than the expectation of excellence that runs throughout. He said the district thinks of itself as a family, but a family with standards — one that sees the students in its classrooms as the future of Belton, Honea Path, and the rest of the district’s towns making sure the next generation arrives not merely enrolled, but ready.
