40 McDowell St
Blakely, GA 39823

General education teachers and special education teachers worked hard to collaborate and provide the best educational experience for my daughter. She is doing well in her classes with extra support but just has a hard time with standardized testing.

To make it easiest to understand my frustrations of with being a student here at this school, you need to understand the condition this building, and it's environment, have been in for the past few years. This school is being completely abandoned, and as a result, has shifted through three different principals in the three years I have been here. This in of itself is not an issue, but when one approach is vastly different from the precious, and those changes are not communicated, it creates a distance in understanding and cooperation between the students and the staff. In addition to that, the CTAE hall, intended to house all classes related to construction, or technical careers, smells of sewage nearly every week, the school lunches are (consistently to a worrying degree. It doesn't happen too much, but it happens every other week) either expired or moldy, and the milk in specific is usually spoiled, and most importantly, there is no trust between the students and this school. However, the biggest issues have been the failure, and continuously ignored pushback and unrest that new policies (which I'll get to next) have created.Recently, the school, as well as the board members, have decided it'd be best to implement this policy, and mandate it starting February. Purses of a certain size, backpacks, and any other bags are now, yet again, having to be purchased simply for the school's maintenance of a false sense of security, in a time when many of these students can't afford it. Previously, they had teachers thoroughly search through our bags in order to ensure our safety, but due to this policy, they will significantly cut down on the number of staff checking bags, down to only a handful, and will not be checking nearly as thoroughly due to transparency. I could write more on this policy, and it's inadequacies, but my main focus should be on the fact that this was neither communicated to the students before the policy was announced to have been set forward. They did not ask us what we thought, nor how we might feel about the potential of the policy. Even some of the teachers were upset by the suddenness and lack of communication throughout the day. I may seem like a still disgruntled student who's still complaining of a fresh wound, but ECHS has never had security measures that were good. We already had a bag search, metal detectors, vape detectors, and all these measures to prevent poor behavior, but I still students vape in the halls. It's been futile.

Disappointed in the lack of dealing with racial bullying and violence. Bullying from students, bus drivers, and some teachers. Sad world we live in.