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Dr. Rachel Hazel, who recently took over as superintendent of Troup County Schools this summer, hosted the second of four scheduled town hall meetings to hear from the parents and other stakeholders about their expectations of the school system and what improvements need to be made.

To start the town hall, attendees were handed out pens and sticky notes so they could answer three questions. What is the school system doing well? What can it improve on? And how are they going to know success?

From the responses gathered Hazel said it was clear that the Hogansville community appreciates its teachers.

“What’s working well, there is one thing that is very, very clear: dedicated teachers and a community that’s interested,” Hazel said.

Hazel added that the individualism of each school was also seen as something the school district is doing well.

“We talked about the individualism of each community, and how you can tell what differentiates Hogansville Elementary from Long Cane Elementary from West Point Elementary. Each school has its own personality, and that’s something that you want to preserve,” Hazel said.

On the areas where the school systems can improve, there were comments asking for updated and bigger facilities, along with newer playgrounds.

Hazel said that TCSS is constantly looking at facilities in need of upgrading and prioritizing where money goes for those projects.

“We are in the process of prioritizing needs across districts, as far as facilities go, as far as maintenance projects go, once we have that list prioritized and we are able again to look at our budgets and look at how we move forward, I can promise you, we will be very transparent in how we prioritize projects,” Hazel said.

“I don’t know what that’s going to look like just yet. I know that there are a lot of projects that we’re finishing up right now, and I know that it’s like those projects will be very, very transparent.”

“We also know that this school was originally assigned as a high school, not an elementary school, and that brings its own unique challenges,” Hazel said.

Hazel said that in the spring they will start to formalize the plan for the next E-SPLOST, which is how the district pays for its larger facilities improvements.

“This year you will hear what our next phases and those plans are,” Hazel said.

Another attendee asked how the school system works with city and county governments to prepare for potential enrollment increases due to residential development.

Dr. Pennie Tucker, Assistant Superintendent of Operations, said that they have spreadsheets to estimate what additional enrollment might bring depending on the type of development.

“When we look at these projects, most of the things we can look at are the apartment complexes. They might be getting five kids from a pretty good-sized apartment complex. Now if a single-family home development is coming up, let’s say there are 300 homes, we might get 35 elementary students. We have a formula that figures this on average,” Tucker said.

Hazel noted that it’s dangerous to build facilities based on housing development plans because sometimes those plans fall through and you’re left with an empty school.

Two more town hall meetings are planned in the following weeks. LaGrange High School will host a town hall on Wednesday, Sep. 11 in the auditorium at 5:30 p.m. Troup High School will host another on Tuesday, Sep. 17 in the auditorium at 5:30 p.m.