PROGRESS THAT IS VISIBLE is better than progress that is promised. Hence, just the demolition and clearing away of the rundown, largely vacant and abandoned old homes atop the plot destined to become the new Anna K. Davie Elementary School in a highly visible part in South Rome is a heartening sight.

The work is being done by city public-works crews on overtime and weekends, with costs covered by the Rome Board of Education.

While a couple of major pieces of property await final condemnation/acquisition the plan is for the new, $12 million, SPLOST-funded school — 40 classrooms with space for 600 children in a combining of the student bodies of the old (already demolished) Anna K. and Southeast Elementary — to be up and teaching by August of 2013.

It no doubt helps that there are both plans and funding on hand when getting rid of eyesores sprinkled across the community, many of them red-tagged and not a few in the same general South Rome area.

However, given that even an empty lot — assuming it is kept free of kudzu, etc. — is almost a pastoral sight when a replacement for vistas of blight and decay, Rome’s leaders really should consider a systematic assault with heavy equipment on all such city-held sites.

Even without added funding assistance available although, come to think of it, if Rome looked more kempt no matter where one went that might lure more families with children to settle here ... and the state tosses extra money into the local educational kitty for every student enrolled.