Leaders from the Blytheville School District appeared before the state Charter Authorizing Panel via Zoom Tuesday afternoon.
The panel has asked the district to provide an academic report on a yearly basis as it considers whether to renew Blytheville High School —A New Tech School’s charter next year.
Leaders will go before the board again in the fall as part of process to renew the charter, which ends in June 2021 and provides BHS with flexibility in its curriculum.
On Tuesday, the Charter Authorizing Panel peppered leaders with questions regarding the high school’s 2018-19 F rating and whether New Tech is a good fit for BHS.
“After working so hard that school year, you can imagine our dismay when we found out that were still one-tenth of a point from that D rating,” Blytheville School District curriculum director Sally Cooke said. “That rating has been extremely tough on our school and on our community as we try to showcase all of the good things that we know are happening and that our school is doing in order to keep our students here; to keep our students engaged; to keep our students from choicing out to area districts and the KIPP school, which is also in our district. We have spent our focus this school year on improving our teaching and learning. We will not be satisfied until we see more results and success in that process.”
Cooke said the district has to overcome barriers that “aren’t excuses, they’re just challenges in front of us.”
According to Blytheville’s presentation, some of those challenges include teachers leaving in the middle of the school year; inexperienced teachers, with 43 percent of the BHS staff having three years or less of experience; and having three principals in three years at BHS.
Two years ago, the district hired New Tech guru Matthew Swenson who resigned as high school principal after a year on the job to take a position with New Tech.
“He had been given latitude to make a lot of changes, but many of the things that he began needed his presence in order to be implemented successfully,” Cooke said. “So, we had to change course again. Our new principal, Mrs. (Jennifer) Blankenship, does have roots in our town and our school and was a teacher, a counselor and an assistant principal here, which provides much needed stability for both staff, students and our community. She has used this year to transition, to rebuild the culture of trust and to readjust programs and schedules that were begun but were not able to be carried through with the move from the previous principal.”
Panel member Phil Baldwin suggested a leadership retention plan.
“With three principals in three years, that’s debilitating to any organization,” Baldwin said. “No amount or effort will overcome that. I hope that that’s part of your plan...I think a leadership retention plan to specifically make sure you accomplish that really is critical.”
Cooke said the district is providing “wrap-around support” with all principals meeting once a month and collaborating on best practices.
Panel member Dr. Angela Kremers said the New Tech model isn’t a good fit for a small rural school with a lot of turnover, inexperienced teachers, and academic issues.
“The New Tech model really does require strength of your teachers because so much of it is co-teaching, the teacher-led PD (professional development),” Kremers said. “There is such a strong demand on the experience of the teachers with that type of a model. It kind of makes me still think, does it still need to be a charter because the purpose of a charter is that you are going to offer opportunities for students over and above what would have been available in that public school district.”
Blytheville instructional facilitator Angela Parsons responded, “That is a major concern because a lot of our teachers are inexperienced, but in our building we’ve been very intentional to build up New Tech certified trainers over the years. We’re now up to five that are completely certified and there are several that have gone through the process; they just haven’t quite finished yet.”
The certified New Tech trainers mentor inexperienced teachers, she said.
Kremer said she likes the district’s new freshman academy, which Cooke says has helped the eighth graders transition to ninth grade and led to a 42 percent decrease in behavior infractions in that grade.
“I think there are good strategies in place, but overall I still have serious concerns about the academic performance,” Kremer said.
Cooke indicated the high school would like to continue with project-based learning principles of New Tech, but may not be a New Tech school after its contract ends.
“New Tech is not just a strategy; it’s just good teaching,” Cooke said. “It’s just good organization. This will be our last year with the network; this coming year will be our last year with the network and we have those six coaches in the classrooms, on campus that will help support around project-based learning. For our kids, the project-based learning provides the engagement that keeps them in the classroom every day and that’s one reason we’ve stuck with this, because our kids need to be engaged. They need to have real world projects. They need to have experiences that they can relate to in the work that they do. If you add those things together with the intense deep dive that the PLC (Professional Learning Community) process is providing for teacher learning and teacher knowledge around essential standards, which they’ve begun that work, I think those two things combined together are a really good thing. We want to keep the charter because of the things that we are able to do through our collaborative time, through our partner teaching and some of those things that we might not be able to do otherwise. We would prefer to have that flexibility to do that. I will say also we did apply for the PLC grant for this school, along with two other buildings in our district. We’re very hopeful that one of the three buildings will get that grant. But regardless of that, we’re going to continue to move forward and learn together about what it takes to have strong teaching and learning. This is a district-wide initiative. They are not on their own working on this; they have support up and down the line from K-12 in that process, so that we hopefully won’t have to worry about New Tech as an issue.”
Cooke touted the success of the Professional Learning Community cohort grant at Blytheville Primary, which is working with Solution Tree to change the culture and mindsets at the school as teachers take ownership collaboratively to support all students.
She called it a “game-changer.”
“We know that having every teacher take ownership of the work of all students and not just the students that they teach is going to make a difference,” Cooke said.
Panel member Dr. Naccaman Williams asked if the district had support from the community.
“It looks like it’s bigger than the school to me as I listen — the turnover rate and so forth,” he said. “Do you all work with the Chamber of Commerce to address maybe quality of life issues in the community? There seems like there needs to be some way to not only draw top talent but to keep top talent in the area, not only for schools but for businesses in general.”
Cooke noted the district works with the Chamber’s Blytheville Leadership Institute program and she pointed out that superintendent Bobby Ashley is on the Chamber board.
“We have a unique situation in Blytheville as far as keeping talent,” Cooke said. “With the KIPP school in our district, with three schools within 15 miles that are other districts that pay higher salaries than we do, sometimes that makes it harder to keep teachers within the district, because they have an easier route with a higher salary very close by. So we have some unique challenges with that.”
She added the district has done a lot of work getting its message out in the community.
“But as you can imagine, with school choice,” Cooke said. “There’s been a lot of — the only way I can say it is white flight probably from our district and into the surrounding school districts. We’re working as hard as we can to try to show them that there are great things and that there are great opportunities in our district. In fact, our voice in our community says if we don’t succeed as a district, our town is not going to succeed. We’ve had that strong voice through our community, through our Chamber and through other organizations. We try to get out into civic organizations and say that as well. So we have support. Oftentimes those that are leaving us though, it’s as much about job opportunities for family members or an easier workload somewhere else with higher pay.”
She said the district has the challenge of teachers leaving in the middle of the school year as well.
“It’s not uncommon for us to have teachers to leave during the school year, for a variety of reasons, and we’re often times forced to find long-term subs, combine classes or assign courses to teachers that don’t have very much experience,” Cooke said. “For example, during that 2018-19 school year, our critical reading teacher left us during the second semester and it was quite an adjustment for the students who needed that extra support. But we know as we continue to work on our culture and provide stronger support to novice teachers that we can slow this occurrence.”