Good Thursday morning to you…

Weather: Rain approaching. A system moving up from the Gulf Coast will bring a chance of showers overnight and into Friday morning. Today we’ll have mostly sunny skies with highs in the upper 60s. Rain chances are 20 percent overnight with lows in the lower 50s. Friday’s rain chances are 30 percent in the morning, with clearing skies in the afternoon and highs in the lower 60s.

Good to go for five more years. The Jefferson County Board of Education got the news it wanted to hear Wednesday afternoon: the system will be accredited through 2019. The word came from a 10-member on-site team from AdvancED, which assesses systems on behalf of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. JefCoEd received an Index of Educational Quality score of 251 points, which is almost exactly in the middle of the 100-to-400 scale. The team moved throughout the system on Monday and Tuesday, first doing interviews with parents and other stakeholders, then observing classes in progress. Those observations took place at 10 of the system’s 56 schools, including Gardendale and Pinson Valley high schools, Bragg Middle, Bagley and Kermit Johnson Elementary.

Sports: Clash of titans. Pitcher Sharley Miller shut down the bats of Curry, the top-ranked softball team in Class 5A, as her No. 2 Hayden team won 4-1 on the road Wednesday. The Wildcats smacked three doubles over four at-bats to score three runs in the sixth inning. Things don’t get any easier for the Cats this afternoon, as they host fourth-ranked Mortimer Jordan. Both yesterday’s and today’s games are Area 12 contests that will determine seedings in the tournaments in a couple of weeks; only two of the teams will survive and advance to regionals. Speaking of rankings, the latest poll by the Alabama Sports Writers Association – issued before Wednesday’s game – keeps Curry, Hayden and Jordan in the first, second and fourth spots for another week. Area 12 is the only area in any of the six classes to have three teams ranked in the top five.