Parents meet new GHS, Dillard Middle principals
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on July 29, 2017 4:50 PM
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News-Argus/JOEY PITCHFORD
Goldsboro High School principal Marcia Manning speaks at Thursday's meet and greet event. Ms. Manning said her first priority will be to make Goldsboro High a safe place to learn.
For Theresa Cox, new Principal at Dillard Middle School, the road to school improvement starts with building trust.
Ms. Cox joined new Goldsboro High Principal Marcia Manning at the H.V. Brown Center Thursday for a meet and greet event organized by Operation Unite Goldsboro and Wayne County Public Schools. Speaking to an audience of parents, teachers and WCPS staff, the two women discussed goals for their respective schools and strategies for reaching them.
Ms. Cox spoke first, and said she wants each DMS student to be their brother's keeper. The school will have a focus on conflict resolution, she said, aided by a room where students can go to discuss their disagreements under adult supervision.
Students will eventually be trained as peer mediators, Ms. Cox said, so that they can help their classmates work through problems.
In addition to students helping students, Ms. Cox said the school will adopt a mentoring program in which teachers at the school are assigned students to keep up with. Those teachers will be responsible for making sure the students are doing all right, keeping track of their attendance and checking in with them frequently to see if they need help in any part of their lives.
Giving students more opportunities for interaction with adults will help those who are disadvantaged, she said.
"This will especially help students in single-parent households, who may not have a father figure around," she said. "We want to have open communication, make sure that parents feel free to come to the school and talk with us."
Ms. Manning took the podium after Ms. Cox. She also talked about how to achieve a more positive school culture, with a primary focus on a creating a safe and nurturing environment for students to learn in.
From that base, she said, academics can be improved. She said that students at Goldsboro High are looking for any opportunity to learn, and it is the administration's job to give it to them.
The perception among some that students simply aren't interested in school is misguided, she said.
"Many of our children are hungry for a high quality education," she said. "Even the kids who might act up, when you sit down and talk to them, not one student has ever been unable to tell me about their goals."
Ms. Manning said that students at GHS have been frustrated by the school's high teacher turnover rate. She told the audience that every position at GHS has been filled for the coming school year, and that she plans to end the year with all of the teachers she began it with.
Not all of those teachers will be in the classroom on day one, as they are still awaiting final approval from the Board of Education. Among those is a band director, Ms. Manning said, who will also teach theater.
The teachers are expected to be in the classrooms within the first few days of school, she said.
This plan also includes the addition of several advanced placement classes, as well as the return of multiple technical and vocational classes to the school and a zero-tolerance policy on fighting.
Unite Goldsboro founder Mark Colebrook said he was excited about the number of people who came to the meet and greet. He was happy to see a 50/50 split between WCPS staff and community members, and said he feels confident moving into the school year.
He called on community members to step up to provide students with needed services, and to speak up about issues they might have with the school board or administration instead of complaining among themselves.
He also said that people need to view the schools and school board as theirs, instead of a foreign entity.
"We need people in the community to understand their role and be preventative about things," he said. "We need to align our goals with the school system. If they say they're having problems with transportation, look around and see who you can give a ride to school. It's our community schools."