By Linda Seida, Staff Writer
WEST AMWELL — Today (Thursday) is the day community members can find out how their opinions of South Hunterdon Regional High School (SHRHS) compare to an evaluation done by a panel of independent education experts.
An independent team, sent by an institution that bestows accreditation to secondary schools, is scheduled to provide a detailed report on South Hunterdon’s program. The event will begin at 2:55 p.m. in the school’s auditorium, 301 Mount Airy-Harbourton Road.
The report is one of the first benchmarks in the Middle States Accreditation for Growth (AFG) Process. It follows two years of work on the part of the school since it began working toward AFG accreditation.
The AFG focuses on improvement and growth. It is a five-year process that includes annual independent reviews.
The process began with what the school describes as an “exhaustive self-study and review of the entire school program.” The goal is to “enhance school improvement, community involvement and public accountability.”
Community members who have been following the process may recall the school’s appeal to the public last year, asking community members to participate in the evaluation process by filling out questionnaires.
The school also asked students and their parents as well as teachers to fill out the same type of questionnaire. All participants were asked to list what, in their view, are South Hunterdon’s strengths. Conversely, they also were asked to list areas where they thought the school could use improvement.
According to the Middle States Association, a school’s achievement of accreditation affirms that the school provides “a quality of education that the community has a right to expect and the education world endorses. Accreditation is a means of showing confidence in a school’s performance.”
The main goal of the accreditation process, the association says, is the “improvement of education for youth by evaluating the degree to which a school has attained worthwhile outcomes set by its own staff and community.”
Benefits include methods of planning for improvement and consistency between educational purpose and practice, according to the association.

