Red Clay School District’s board voted Tuesday night to approve turnaround plans for its three Priority Schools.
One key element is creating a community campus model for Warner Elementary and Shortlidge Academy. Shortlidge will serve students in Kindergarten through second grade, while Warner will serve third through fifth grades. The goal is to combine school resources for each grade.
"So the idea here was to try to combine resources. You have more ability to move students between different classrooms to meet their own individual needs, allow staff to be able to have more professional development together, more collaborative work together," says Red Clay School Board President, Kenny Rivera.
Rivera adds combined campus model, which is also expected to facilitate efforts to make sure all students can read by third grade, is drawing mixed reactions from the parents of affected students.
The state rolled out its Priority Schools initiative in September and the two districts involved, Red Clay and Christina, balked at many portions of the state's initial plan. Rivera says that while the Priority Schools process has been difficult and left school board members feeling the had little say and few choices, there have been some substantial victories.
"We were able to stop, what I would think would be harmful practices from going in. The department was pretty strong with trying to get a lot of ideas into the plan that we strongly did not think would be best for our kids," he says.
Rivera specifically points to rejecting the state’s effort to give major autonomy, including most hiring and firing decisions, to school leaders. He says move would have made principals less accountable overall.
The changes under the new plans will be implemented in August at the start of next school year.