Local schools avoid takeover
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on September 27, 2017 5:50 AM
Two Wayne County schools are no longer being considered for state takeover after North Carolina's Innovative School District announced a narrowed list of eligible schools Friday.
Brogden Primary and Eastern Wayne Elementary were both taken off the list, having been included among the original 48 eligible schools identified by the ISD in early September.
Wayne County Public Schools Superintendent Michael Dunsmore said he was encouraged by the result, especially because similar programs in other states have not been shown to make a substantial difference in student achievement.
"This has been done in Florida, it's been done in Tennessee, and it's been done in another Midwestern state, and it just has not been successful anywhere that this has been done," he said.
Signed into law in 2016, the ISD is a state program which transfers control of certain low-performing schools from local education agencies to charter or education management organizations. The ISD narrowed its list of eligible schools to six on Friday ---- it is expected to choose two schools from that list to take over by December.
The two county schools were removed due to their school achievement scores, which were both D's. The latest list did not include any school with a D grade.
It also excluded schools receiving federal school improvement grants, such as Brogden Middle and Carver Heights Elementary. Those two schools were also on the original list, but were removed soon after.
Dunsmore said that he had been part of the discussion which shaped the criteria, and he was happy to see that schools with a D rating would not be treated the same as those with F's.
He also said that if state lawmakers want to see schools improve, the best course of action would be to let local experts do their jobs.
"What they want done, we have been doing here. We're only a year in, and it's going to take around three years to really get to it, but I'm very excited with what we've been doing with things like the Restart Model," he said. "I'd like to see the General Assembly step back and allow the local agencies to do some of these things because bringing outsiders in just hasn't worked."
The Restart Model is the school improvement model in place at Goldsboro High School -- which gives the school flexibility similar to a charter school -- while keeping it under the control of Wayne County Public Schools.