Memorandum from Mary Kay Murphy
Mary Kay Murphy, Ph.D. District 3  School Board Member marykaymurphy@aol.com

May 13, 2010 

Broad Foundation Visits Norcross and Duluth 

For the second year in a row, the Broad Foundation of California came to Gwinnett County for a site visit to determine if our school system will be the Broad Prize Winner of $1 million in scholarships for Gwinnett County Public School students. 

During this second visit, members of the Broad Site Visit team came to Norcross High School and Duluth Middle School to extend their visit to six schools of the 123 in our system. 

The significance of being named a Broad Foundation finalist for the Gwinnett County Public School system is that it shines a spotlight on the building blocks of excellence in our school system. 

We will learn on October 19, 2010 in New York City if we receive $1 million for scholarship for the GCPS Class of 2011. By being a finalist, our school system has already been designated for $250,000 in direct scholarship aid. 

Being selected as one of five urban public schools in the nation of the 100 largest systems with high minority and poverty levels supports our community’s decision to enrollments in GCPS as their first choice for educating their students. 

Being selected also supports community members’ decision to move into Gwinnett, to remain in our community, and to support public education by becoming involved in sports, community programs, the Foundation for Excellence, the Relay for Life, and other school-related special events. 

Being selected also supports community decisions to provide funding for public education in Gwinnett County through property tax, bond referenda, and Special Purpose Local Option Sales Taxes (SPLOST). 

When we welcomed two members of the Broad Foundation Site Visit team to Norcross High School, we spoke to them of the significant building blocks of excellence that are reflected in Gwinnett County Public Schools. 

These reflect the Core Beliefs and Commitments enacted by the Gwinnett County Board of Education in 2007 and are as follows: 

First, is the building block of the Strategic Plan for Academics with its emphasis on teaching and learning. Because we were meeting at Norcross High School, we reflected on the 1997 decision by the Norcross High School leaders to introduce the International Baccalaureate diploma and certificate program to the community. 

The next building block of excellence as reflected at Norcross High School is the school system’s Strategic Plan for Facilities. In 2001, Norcross High School opened its new high school, located on Spalding Drive, at the cost of $25 million. The school was funded from the 1 cent SPLOST and opened one year early and completely debt free. 

The third building block of excellence is the school system’s academic mission as reflected in its commitment to close the achievement gap at high levels for all students. At each of the 123 schools in the GCPS system, this is an active commitment. 

Its success is reflected by the outcomes of performance measures at each school on appropriate measures such as the Gateway test, the Georgia Writing Tests, the Advanced Placement tests, the SAT tests, and the International Baccalaureate examinations. 

Another building block is success if the Gwinnett County commitment to the Principal as the Academic Leaders at each local school. An additional building block is Teachers being Prime Movers of the Academic Program as each of the system’s 123 schools. 

The final building block for success that we brought to the attention of the Broad Site Visit team is each school’s Accountability Report posted on school websites and available on the GCPS website. These reports to the community provide evidence of the goals and achievements at each local school to improve academic results. 

We thank the Broad Foundation for naming Gwinnett County Public Schools as a finalist in the 2010 program to select the best urban public school in the nation. 

Being a finalist helps the system build civic capacity to support public education as a time when our nation relies more than even on our public schools to prepare students to compete in global markets; to prepare them as citizens; and to provide the workforce to advance our nation’s competitive edge in emerging global markets. 

Ninety-two percent of the students in Georgia attend public schools. Gwinnett County educates one in 10 of each of the students in our state. We recognize our responsibility and work to continually improve the quality of our system and to meet our destiny of becoming a world class school system—for the benefit of our local community, our state, and our nation.

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