The Alabama Department of Education recently released its Annual Yearly Progress reports and the news is good for local schools.

Hartselle City School made its AYP goals not only for the system as a whole, but also for each school.

The news isn’t as good for Morgan County Schools. While all of its schools made AYP, the school system as a whole didn’t for the second year in a row. The reason for that is that the system failed to meet its goals in special education reading.

However, the school system achieved its goals in every other area, including recording 100 percent proficiency in three grade levels at three different schools.

While the news is good, there is always room for improvement. Because of No Child Left Behind, schools have a goal of being 100 percent proficient by 2014. That is a lofty goal, but we hope that our schools will continue to improve and meet that goal.

We’d like to congratulate the teachers, administrators, students and parents for their outstanding work over the last school year.