The newly formed P-16 Committee met with Simpson County School Superintendent Greg Paes and staff members to discuss issues that impact the school district’s rating.
The school district has an overall “C” rating but some individual schools in the district have a “D” rating. For that reason the state has mandated that a P-16 Committee be established in the community to work with the school district to help improve the rating for the district as well as for the schools with “D” ratings.
Schools with “D” ratings are Magee Elementary and Magee Middle School, and in Mendenhall, both the middle school and the high school rated “D.”
There are approximately 25 members of the council, and they met with members of the school administration last Thursday to define reasons for the district’s “D” rated schools. They also looked at what the district is doing to improve the rating for the schools and what the P-16 Council can do to help the district improve ratings.
The council itself is inclusive, consisting of members from all sections of the community.
Pat Brown serves as chairman, with Reverend Ralph Walker as vice president and Stacy Chapin as secretary. In addition to the various community leaders there are also representatives from the district school system, including teachers and administrators.
Superintendent Paes said one of the biggest issues the schools face is the attendance rate. He said a lot of parents think nothing of sending children to school and then checking them out of class early and that a lot of children just don’t want to come to school and parents do not consider it important enough to make them go.
Paes explained that attendance has a major effect on testing. Schools must test 95 percent of their students and they must show growth or improvement of test scores. If the students do not show up to be tested, schools cannot show the required growth and therefore test scores do not improve to required levels.
In addition, Paes said, it is important to have positive publicity promoted about schools. The newspaper offered space to the school district to promote positive events happening at the schools.
He also noted that it is important to have a good qualified staff to work with students but that finding qualified teachers is getting more and more difficult. One of the issues is that the colleges are not graduating a lot of people who want to go into the teaching field.
Paes said he had spoken with youth court judge Russ Sykes to ask for more stringent penalties for children who are not attending school. He said he is also having the same conversations with truant officers with the goal of getting children back into the class room.
The group discussed implementing mentoring programs at school that may help single parent households. Another program that was discussed was the “The Big Man on Campus” program, where business leaders make themselves available to help at schools through various efforts that help build a sense of community.
Superintendent Paes said another issue is educating parents on the importance of the programs that are offered at the schools and why it is so important for students to attend class and not be absent.
