Particularly proud
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles marking the 50th Anniversary of Hartselle City Schools.
On September 23, the U.S. Department of Educa tion released its 2024 National Blue Ribbon Schools and named among them Hartselle’s own Crestline Elementary School whose administrators, teachers, and staff are most deserving of the recognition.
Crestline is Hartselle’s second honoree. Barkley Bridge Elementary School achieved the status in 2011.
And between 2010 and 2024, all of Hartselle’s schools were named Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence “Lighthouse” Schools for their school improvement efforts and their academic performance. Several schools have received that honor more than once.
Hartselle’s schools have addition-ally submitted themselves to school improvement efforts aimed at science, technology, engineering, and mathematics instruction, at outdoor classroom and other environmental endeavors, at characterbuilding programs, at career technical education competitive performance, at Advanced Placement testing performance, and more.
Self-assessing to determine which practices are bad, good, better, and best can be painful. When you’re working hard, it’s tough to realize you’re not working smart. When you’re doing well, it’s tough to acknowledge that you could be doing better. When you’re doing great, it’s humbling to have to acknowledge that great for many or even for most is not necessarily great for all. It’s exhausting, because it knows no end. Students change, teachers change, resources change, state standards change, and the science of learning changes. All must inform schools’ everchanging efforts toward excellence. In Hartselle, they do. And they have for quite some time. In October 1974 when Hartselle was on the cusp of its leap from Morgan County Schools to forming its own Hartselle City School system, a Hartselle Enquirer article featured Morgan County’s then-Superintendent Dr. George Nancarrow who commented on the school accreditation efforts of Crestline, Burleson, and Hartselle Junior High.
Nancarrow read from a Southern Association of Colleges and Schools letter written by the chair-man of the 1974 accreditation visitation committee Dr. Michael Carr. “The progress which I observed in these schools is remarkable and most commendable. They are an outstanding example [and] I am particularly proud of their accomplishments.” At first glance, the1974 accreditation review might appear to have no connection to Crestline’s 2024 National Blue Ribbon honor, but the commonality lies in the 50 year commitment to self-assessment and to making change where change is needed.
The teachers, staff, and administrators about whom Carr was bragging in 1974 are no longer serving students on their campuses, but their legacies of dedication and hard work remain.
Like Carr we can be “particularly proud of their accomplishments.” And we are certainly proud of Crestline’s!
