The Coweta County voted to name two Coweta County elementary schools after long-time county teachers and administrators, at its July 8 regular meeting.

The board voted to name the new elementary school being built on Jim Starr Road in northern Coweta County “Brooks Elementary School,” after former Superintendent Richard Brooks.

The school is currently under construction, and will be opened in August of 2009.

Brooks retired from the school system in 2002, after 30 years of service in education in Coweta County Schools and eight years as Superintendent. He came to Coweta County schools in 1972, first at Newnan High School, then to the newly-opened O.P. Evans Junior High School, as an industrial arts teacher.  He served as an assistant principal and principal for many years, before being named an assistant superintendent in 1986 and Superintendent in 1994. 

The board also voted to rename the Grantville Elementary School “Glanton Elementary School,” after long-time Grantville principal Thomas Glanton.

Grantville Elementary School was opened in 2004.  The school’s first principal,Carole Criswell,retired this year. Katie Garrett will replace Criswell as the school’s new principal in the 2008-09 school year.

Grantville’s former elementary school, now Grantville’s Municipal Center, bore Glanton’s name in honor of his years of service to education in the city and county. The city building still bears his name, but the Board’s action will make Grantville’s school “Glanton” once again as well.

Glanton, now 96, and a veteran of World War II, lives in Newnan. He came to Grantville’s school in 1933, and soon served the school as its principal.  With the exception of service in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, Glanton’s career was spent in the soon-unified county school system and through the consolidation of the Coweta and Newnan School System’s in 1969, before his retirement in 1972.

Glanton also served before and after the war in the reserves, retiring from the Air Force reserves as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Both Brooks and Glanton are both graduates of Auburn University.

Dates for official dedication ceremonies for the schools’ namings will be announced as the school year approaches on August 6.

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