This past week I have really begun to delve into my new beat at The Vicksburg Post.

As the current education reporter, I have been in contact with local schools to get ready for the school year, which is just around the corner.

In addition to gathering school calendars, uniform policies and supply list, I have spoken to principals, teachers, maintenance workers, the superintendent and an educational technology director about the preparations that are happening this summer for the upcoming school year.

In the Vicksburg Warren School District, school buildings are getting energy efficient lighting and energy efficient heating and cooling units that will shut off when not in use to conserve energy. New low water flow efficient toilets are also being installed at the schools.

The purpose of the upgrade is to modernize the local facilities and cut the energy bills each month, maintenance supervisor Bill Sanderford said.

Lawn maintenance, painting the walls and waxing the floors are other actions being taken over the summer at the schools.

The local public high schools are also gearing up to issue Lenovo Chromebook devices to each student next week. Students will be able to use the computers in and out of the classroom to help facilitate learning.

Wade Grant, director of educational technology, said distributing the devices was a year and a half in the making, and he is glad to finally see the project come to fruition.

The biggest story last week was the local school district being graded with a “D” accountability rating by the Mississippi Department of Education. I feel like this news was disappointing to some, but I still have hope in a brighter future for Vicksburg.

Unfortunately, because of changes in the curriculum and in testing, all schools from around the state were not able to receive productive information from their grade. Dr. J.P. Beaudoin, chief of research and development at MDE, said in a press release the 2014-2015 accountability rating can not be compared to the 2013-2014 rating because students used different tests rending the grades as not a valid measure of progress.

Also, this grade is from the 2014-2015 school year. It doesn’t even look at current information. The state board of education took longer to get the information back to school districts around the state because of data quality errors in computing the grades.

The most recent accountability ratings from the 2015-2016 school year are expected to be released in October to start to give schools a more accurate look at their progress.

This week be on the lookout for a story about the new principal at Bowmar Elementary School, Jason Bennett, who last year was the assistant principal at Vicksburg High School. I am also working on a story about VHS donating extra workbooks to Vicksburg Catholic Schools.

I’m excited to get this closer look into public and private education in Vicksburg and hope to keep the community updated with the latest news impacting our youngest citizens.