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).
So if a student is failing the course and brings up their score but are still failing, should we celebrate the fact that they are improving but still failing? Should they be allowed to graduate even though they failed? We can blame the standard all we want but failing to meet standard, though improved, is still failing Mr. James
Marc, tell Phelps he can’t hide behind the veil.
Could someone provide us with names of school board members?
https://www.issnc.org/about/boe/meet-our-board
It’s pretty easy to navigate to the ISS Board website…
https://www.issnc.org/about/boe/meet-our-board
Absenteeism is not the school’s fault; it’s the parents’ responsibility to get their children to school.
Absenteeism is a problem but that is on the adults in the household. It is your job to get them to school.
True. It is the parents responsibility. None the less, kids are absent. What can we, as a community, do to help the CHILDREN get to school regularly so THEY can learn. Teachers have so much to do already and I know they do what they can to encourage kids to be in class.
What can we do to support teachers and these children?
Do school social workers call, or better yet, visit the homes and meet with parents to see what is going on? After such a visit, could volunteers follow up by texting/calling the night before with reminders for parent/guardian?
I think incentives for attendance would be good. Offer to all students but have an additional incentive for those that have an issue with attendance. Maybe even one for the parents of those kids.