BY KARISSA MILLER

Parents and community members spoke out during the Iredell-Statesville Schools Board of Education meeting earlier this week about wanting better results at the district’s low-performing schools.

Thirteen I-SS schools are currently considered low performing by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, with nine of them classified as D schools and four of them as F schools.

During the public comment period, Marvelous Outland said she has an honor roll student in a low-performing middle school.

“We know that we have 13 low-performing schools. If six are regular social-economic areas, then we know that socio-economics is not the problem,” Outland said.

Outland asked the school board why can’t certified teachers be assigned to students that are failing.

“We need to do something to turn around this ship,” she said. “I’ve got skin in the game — my son is in one of those schools.”

She said that absenteeism is a problem.

“What can be done to encourage students to be in school,” she asked.

Speaker Cheryl Pletcher said 13 out 36 schools in the district aren’t meeting “basic expectations” for reading and math.

“That information was surprising, if not shocking,” she said.

Pletcher said that she knows that the issue is complex and that the pandemic didn’t help matters.

“I would like for us to rise to the occasion and do better. How can we, as a community, add value to respond to this crisis?” Pletcher asked. “I personally review the agenda before almost every meeting. I open the documents to be prepared for the meeting. To my surprise, this issue wasn’t even on the agenda for this important meeting.”

“I’m suggesting,” she said, “that our community be given an option to be a part of the solution.”

Pletcher criticized the leadership of the school board and said that she expects that this issue to be on the school board agenda for the rest of the year.

Paula Mimnaugh said that I-SS should have certified and highly qualified teachers in low-performing schools. She suggested absenteeism could be addressed by giving students some type of reward for being at school all week.

I-SS Superintendent Jeff James said that the system for evaluating schools needs to be revised because it doesn’t measure the true growth that goes on in a classroom. He has spoken out against that current model that DPI uses to grade schools, saying it continues to punish schools even when they do improve their test scores.

A school’s grade comes is  based on standardized test scores (80 percent) and whether student performance grew relative to expectations (20 percent).