Education

Liddell makes no apologies for time away

If you have tried to reach Columbus Schools Superintendent Martha Liddell at her office this school year, there’s a one-in-three chance you were told she was not in the office. In fact, there’s a one-in-three chance that Liddell wasn’t even in town.

So far during the 2012-13 school year Liddell has taken 21 trips that kept her out of the district for at least 60 of the 180 school days this year. Her contemporaries in Starkville, Lewis Holloway, and Lowndes County, Lynn Wright, have made 17 trips between them and have been away from their districts a combined 23 days.

And in a school year in which the superintendent put all “non-essential spending” on hold in January, Liddell’s extensive travels have cost the district $8,058, twice as much as Holloway has spent ($4,037 on 11 trips) and roughly four times as much as Wright has spent ($2,177 on six trips). […]

Education

Columbus School District seeking eCenters partners

The Columbus School District is recruiting churches, community groups and others to help high school dropouts throughout the region complete either their high school diploma or GED.

Schools Superintendent Dr. Martha Liddell tells WCBI-TV that the planned eCenters are the next major step in the Project 2020 dropout recovery program.
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News

Sex education in Mississippi classrooms

The teen pregnancy rate in Mississippi is one of the highest in the nation.

As the Columbus and Lowndes County school systems move forward with teaching state-required sex education in the classrooms, educators, students and their parents have very different opinions on the effectiveness of the fledgling program. […]