Natchez school board members don’t think the district is doing enough to prepare students for the ACT.

Board members discussed ways to improve scores on the college entrance exam at their Thursday meeting and agreed to keep considering the issue until something changes.

“I think maybe there are things we aren’t doing that we could be doing,” board Chairman Norris Edney said.

Superintendent Anthony Morris told the board about a test preparatory plan that includes a pre-test in the eighth-grade and another one in the 10th-grade. To administer the tests the district would have to pay at least $6 or $7 per student, Morris said, likely more.

But that’s money well spent, board member Johnny Dale said.

“If we are going to improve our ACT scores, I think this is just basic,” he said. “I don’t see how we can’t do this. I think that cost is small compared to the importance of this.”

Currently, students at Natchez High typically take the ACT for the first time in 11th or 12th grade. Morris said there are numerous books and software programs available aimed at boosting scores, but it’s often up to the student to use and pay for the aides.

Morris also said the most important factor to improving test scores is to increase the rigor of classes students are taking.

The school offers two advanced placement courses, several dual-enrollment classes with local colleges and a variety of online classes. But participation in the more rigorous classes is low, Principal James Loftin said. Of the students who start the classes, few complete them. Some fail, others drop out.

The board said they’d also like to see more emphasis put on these classes, more encouragement for students who try but struggle and assigned teachers to monitor the online work.

Dale said he felt it was the district’s responsibility to do whatever it takes to boost ACT scores, even though the numbers aren’t factored into minimum standards on the state level.

“We are getting a huge push from all sides on the Mississippi basic test (the MCT),” he said. “We are not getting pushed to work on the ACT. I want to see a battery of ACT tests. I’m saying we have to push ourselves.”

Edney asked Morris to bring a cost analysis for the two preparatory tests and additional help in rigorous classes to a future board meeting.

In other business, Assistant Superintendent Larry Little presented information on the district’s work toward accreditation through the organization formerly known as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. SACS has expanded to include northern states and is now called Advanced Ed.

The district is applying for district-wide accreditation, a new label that can be added on to the existing school accreditation each school receives.

The process will last nearly all year for principals and administrators. Currently the district is working on a series of surveys that must be filled out by parents, teachers and community members.

In October or November an outside team will visit the district to review schools.

“This really causes the school district to take a good hard look at itself,” Little said. “We can sit in the far southwest corner of Mississippi and say, ‘hey we are doing a fantastic job.’ But if we use a standard that 37 states are using we are meeting a certain standard of quality.”

The accreditation is not required, but Morris and Little said it is a standard by which businesses, industries and colleges judge schools.