SWEETWATER-The Sweetwater City School System is focusing on the year at hand, but last year's academic progress keeps following the system around in a good way.

The state recently sent the school system a banner for being only one of about two dozen school systems out of 136 in the state to earn "Exemplary" status based on the 2011-2012 achievement tests. The city school system did a great job increasing the number of students scoring proficient and above on the spring tests and also did an outstanding job closing the score gaps among all the different subgroups of students in the school system.

See full story in the Sunday, Dec. 2, edition of The Advocate & Democrat.