By Kelly Frizzell
Staff Writer

    Students enrolled in the Middle College program at Morgan County High School may be relocating to their own campus, said Morgan County School Superintendent Stan DeJarnett at the school board meeting Monday. The Morgan County Lifelong Learning Campus is the product of a partnership among the Morgan County School System, DeKalb Technical College and other local education groups.
    The campus will use vacated government buildings in Morgan County to create a learning environment for children, teenagers and adults, according to a written Lifelong Learning Campus proposal. One of the organizations the campus will house is the Middle College program, which caters to individuals, ages 18 to 24, who are behind in accumulating high school credits.
    Currently, students enrolled in the program attend classes on the high school campus. By moving the program to its own building on the Lifelong Learning Campus, students will be able to earn credit hours and also maintain a part-time job.
    “Students don’t have to stay on campus all day,” said DeJarnett. Students will be given the option of working on schoolwork for a few hours each day, and then be able to go to work. “It will help the overall environment at the high school,” said DeJarnett.
    The superintendent said that not all Middle College students will transfer to the new campus. A date has not been set for the transfer of the program.
    The new Marie Bass Martin Academy presented a positive report to the school board Monday night. The academy, which is part of Morgan County Middle School, is in its first year of focusing on students who have been retained at the middle school level more than two times. Teachers hope to prepare students academically for high school.
    “It’s a learning year and next year will be even better,” said MCMS Principal Joe Hutcheson. The academy offers small class sizes and flexible grouping of students. Children participate in small groups, one-on-one instruction, peer tutoring and self-guided instructions. Reward trips, such as a field trip to a University of Georgia Men’s Basketball game or the Mall of Georgia, are incentives for students to demonstrate good behavior. Faculty also took students on a tour of UGA campus to expose students to the college experience and encourage them to start thinking about college. A Morgan County pre-kindergarten teacher was also recognized at the school board meeting for being chosen to serve on the Scholastic Teacher National Advisory Board.
    “I’m just really tickled to be representing…our school and our county,” said Jennifer Cochran, teacher at Morgan County Primary School. Cochran is the only teacher from Georgia to have been chosen this year to serve on Scholastic’s Advisory Board.