PENDER COUNTY — With six schools coming in as low-performing in the 2023-2024 school year, Pender County Schools are putting forth a plan to increase student engagement and improve performance to bring up their scores.
READ MORE: Brunswick considers creating stormwater utility, expanding buffer requirements to improve resiliency
Principals from the six low-performing schools presented their 2024-2025 improvement plans to the county board of education on Tuesday, Nov. 26. They unanimously highlighted attendance, communication with parents, instructional support, and celebrating student achievement as vital components to improving. The schools also aim to promote student engagement through additional learning opportunities.
“We believe that a deficit mindset cannot move us forward and it cannot help us shed the label of a low-performing school,” West Pender Middle School’s principal Laurin Paige Garza said at Tuesday’s meeting.
North Carolina’s accountability model letter-grades schools on their overall performance, which is based on 80% proficiency and 20% academic growth. Schools are considered low-performing if they receive a grade with D or F grades and don’t exceed growth expectations.
In the 2022-2023 school year, Pender County had seven out of 19 schools listed as low-performing, so the most recent report indicates it had improved by one school, Cape Fear Middle, coming off the list.
This year Cape Fear Pope Elementary, Malpass Corner Elementary, Penderlea School (K-8), Burgaw Middle School, West Pender Middle School, and Pender High School are all recurring, low-performing schools and achieved D grades. Burgaw Middle jumped from an F to a D.
At Tuesday’s meeting, chronic absenteeism was a prominent topic of concern from each low-performing school, as each took a different approach to counter it.
Port City Daily asked for numbers on chronic absenteeism, but the district could not provide them by press due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
In North Carolina, if a student has chronic absences — missing at least 10% of the school year — and the school has been unable to get the student back into class via outreach notifications, the county is allowed to take legal action against the parent.
New this year in Pender County is the Judicial Attendance Council. It is an initiative that helps parents avoid legal consequences from their child’s chronic absenteeism with the assistance of Pender County’s District Attorney’s office. Malpass Corner plans to utilize the Judicial Attendance Council as a last resort to incentivize parents to take attendance seriously.
West Pender Middle and Penderlea focused heavily on attendance as well. Each has teams tasked to monitor students and identify reasons behind chronic absenteeism and create precise, informed solutions.
“We’re doing that in a really data-driven way so that we make sure we are efficient whatever it is that we’re putting into place,” Garza said of Pender Middle.
For Penderlea, last year’s staff attendance, 89%, was actually lower than the student attendance, 92% — a concern raised by the board during questioning.
“Did I read that correctly?” board of education member Beth Burns asked.
Principal Steven Harris confirmed as much was true.
“I realize that you are going off of information from when you were not here,” Burns continued.
Harris became principal of Penderlea this year, and so far has seen gains in both staff and student attendance. He said staff is up to 96% attendance and students are at 94%.
Port City Daily asked the county to elaborate on the causes of last year’s staff attendance and its recent turnaround, but did not hear back by press.
Penderlea now sets attendance goals for classes and celebrates them when benchmarks are met. For instance, when each class hits 95% attendance, they receive one letter from the word “attendance.” Once the word is spelled out, they get a class celebration. The school also has occasional morning celebrations to encourage students to make it to school on time.
“What specifically are you doing to incentivize staff to attend more regularly?” Burns asked.
“It starts with expectations,” Harris said. “I expect them to be there every day.”
He pointed out that if one student doesn’t show up, that one student doesn’t get to learn that day. However, when a teacher doesn’t show up, it disrupts the entire class’ learning process — thus emphasizing the importance of teachers’ attendance.
The six schools also presented a newly regular practice of teacher walk-throughs. It consists of a routine cycle of rotating teachers through different classrooms to highlight the good work each is doing in implementing high-quality lessons. The goal is accountability. While this is not new for Pender High, West Pender Middle is scheduling out regular monthly walk-throughs for the first time this year.
“We believe at West Pender Middle School that teacher effectiveness increases when we are in each other’s classrooms,” Garza said about their newly integrated monthly walkthrough schedule.
Despite concerns about continued low performance, Pender County schools grew in overall proficiency and growth scores during the 2023-2024 school year. Last year, it adopted new curricula in math, English, and science. When new lessons are introduced, schools may experience challenges that can result in a slight drop in overall scores. The low-performing schools addressed this by providing targeted support and coaching to help address any challenges. They also prepared teachers to ensure they could understand and deliver the new standards, Pender’s communications coordinator Bob Fankboner wrote to PCD in an email.
The six low-performing schools have interventionists to aid students struggling in math, reading, science or social studies. West Pender and Burgaw Middle recently hired a shared instructional coach who provides extra support to students and teachers. Penderlea expanded instruction by one week for students who needed more help during fall break, and plans to make this a regular occurrence for winter and spring breaks as well.
C.F. Pope is using Title 1 funding to create an afterschool tutoring program called “Panther Power Hour” that gives third through fifth graders an hour and a half of tutoring in either reading, math or fifth-grade science twice a week. The program begins Jan. 17.
The principals agreed parents need to be responsible for doing their part in their child’s education while at home, and are creating more opportunities to engage them and give them the tools to be successful.
Burgaw Middle is sending out family surveys at the end of November that gauge the school’s communication efforts, to be compared against results from a second survey to be sent in May 2025. The school also held its first parent teacher conferences in October.
“We definitely feel that that was a major strength for us,” Allen said.
In another approach, C.F. Pope will be implementing a “Day in the Classroom” to allow parents a chance to see what their children are learning in the classroom. Also planned is a “Duke Energy Science Night” for parents and students to work together with hands-on science experiments. The school will also be introducing a transition night for staff to give parents practice resources for students and learn about next school year’s curriculum; the goal is to encourage parents to help their children retain educational content.
“We all must understand that good is the enemy of great and we have to battle mediocrity,” Superintendent Brad Breedlove said.
The improvement plans are to be approved by the board of education at its Dec. 2 meeting.
Tips or comments? Email info@localdailymedia.com.
Want to read more from PCD? Subscribe now and then sign up for our morning newsletter, Wilmington Wire, and get the headlines delivered to your inbox every morning.
