Clarke County: Bored of Education

By Elissa Ewald

In his time working in the food industry, David Ragsdale experienced a lack of basic literacy and mathematic skills from his fellow employees—cashiers unable to pronounce product names and add up correct amounts of change for customers were common occurrences.

Now a Clarke Central High School Language Arts teacher, Ragsdale, 33, knows one thing for sure.

“Basic literacy,” Ragsdale said. “You can’t survive in this world without it.”

The education system, however, in Athens-Clarke County is struggling compared to other counties in the state.

In 2005, the dropout rate in Clarke County schools reached 8.1 percent, three percent higher than that of the whole state of Georgia. The graduation rate in the county was at 60.5 percent, nearly ten percent lower than the state as a whole.

Katt Gaines, 15, a freshman at Clarke Central, can see the effects of the high dropout rate at her school on a daily basis.

“I’m only a freshman, and a lot of the kids in my classes don’t show up to class, and if they do, have no idea what is going on,” Gaines said. “You can tell a lot of them are counting down the days until they can leave. They don’t really see the point in wasting their time with school.”

Ragsdale can see this attitude in the students in his classroom, as well.

“I tell them, ‘Look around. Where are the people you went to 9th grade, 10th grade with?’” Ragsdale said, “but most of them can tell you why it is easier for them to sell drugs than get a real job.”

In order to convince his students to attend more classes, Ragsdale makes calls home and discusses absences with other teachers in the building when one of his students has gone missing.

“Parents are our biggest assets,” Ragsdale said, “We are beginning to meet in the local housing communities to discuss how we can help them help their kids.”

Ragsdale still strives to show his students that the issues in the books they are reading in his language arts class are applicable to their lives.
Members of the community, like Lewis Shropshire, former president of Motel Enterprises, have also decided to get involved with the education system in Athens.

“From the business standpoint, I know that you can not succeed in the business world without a basic high school education,” Shropshire said, echoing Ragsdale’s concerns for the students of Clarke County.

In order to improve the state of Athens education, Shropshire became a member of Partners for a Prosperous Athens, choosing to focus his efforts and knowledge as a businessman into mending the way Clarke County thought of learning. The committee he is a member of has focused its efforts on extensive discussion and exploration of alternative education methods, and opened their first school in August, J.J. Harris Elementary School, which they are hoping to turn into a charter school.

“We try to focus on kids in pre-K, first, and second grade, before their habits are formed,” Shropshire said, explaining why his committee has chosen to focus on elementary aged kids in Clarke County.

Efforts to improve education in elementary schools cannot be seen by Gaines, who is already in the school system.

“You never know who just might never come back the next day,” Gaines said.

For teachers like Ragsdale, this can be discouraging.

“It’s so crazy,” Ragsdale said. “I just hope to God that people still want to learn. Life would be really boring if there was not anything to learn.”

Edited by Robert Carnes