DCS pulls out of alternative school, sets up new SAP

While the Demopolis City Schools Board of Education voted Monday to undertake a $3.4 million technology upgrade, it also included in that cost the funding of a new SAP facility.

The current SAP setup at U.S. Jones Elementary School houses all grade levels while Monday’s vote will send those students relegated to SAP in grades seven through 12 to a SAP classroom at Demopolis Middle School.

“Part of our new technology purchase is to set up a new SAP for grades seven through 12. You’re also going to have something called the Plato program,” Demopolis City Schools Superintendent Dr. Al Griffin said. “You’ll need a facilitator in there where the students can e-mail back and forth with highly qualified teachers.”

The new SAP classroom will be set up in the old Home Economics kitchen at DMS.

“It’s going to be positive for us,” Griffin said of the move.

In a correlating move, the board voted to sever its relationship with the Linden Alternative School. “Sending people down to Linden with gas at $3.50 a gallon, it is just not feasible anymore,” Griffin said. “We have a new SAP. At the end of the year, we will no longer send students to the Linden Alternative School.”

Griffin informed the board that pulling out of the relationship with Linden Alternative School would save DCS somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000, funding that will help the system to pay the salary of the individual it will hire to run its new SAP classroom.