The efforts toward change Adams County residents have wanted to see in the public schools for years are beginning to take shape.

No one knows if they’ll work, but at least the bus is rolling.

The Natchez-Adams School District was limited on the “change” front until 2003 by a desegregation order. Changes, prior to the order being lifted, had to be approved by a federal judge, a cumbersome process.

But when the community received control over its district again in late 2003, everyone expected to see something different. Yet nothing much happened.

The only change made in nearly a decade — reorganizing the schools by grade level — was reversed this year when the district reverted to something like neighborhood schools, much to the pleasure of most people in the community.

It’s the current school board that decided to climb behind the wheel of the bus earlier this year and start the engine.

But the board didn’t stop there. They announced new, drastic, plans as they slammed their collective foot on the gas pedal and said, “Let’s go.”

Re-arranging elementary students into four kindergarten through fifth-grade schools and creating a ninth-grade academy in just three months time was the first stop on the route.

Now it’s time to begin serious planning for stop No. 2 — a magnet program.

The board members said last spring they wanted to renovate an aging Robert Lewis Middle School into a program for the best and the brightest.

The community is watching, and we are all glad to see the bus moving. Of course grading will begin when it stops.