At a task force meeting Wednesday, Escambia County Superintendent Malcolm Thomas called for more community involvement to address the school district’s widening achievement gap among students.
The Closing the Achievement Gap Task Force — which was formed by the school board and includes city, county, community and school district representatives — presented five proposals to reduce the achievement gap among students — particularly minorities — enrolled in the county’s public schools.
The five proposals included mandatory tutoring, peer-to-peer tutoring, mandatory parent participation, mandatory teacher cultural diversity training and mandatory school social worker resource training.
Thomas said the proposals lacked focus and didn’t go far enough to address specific issues such as poverty, crime and other social problems.
“The next step for me is I would really like to see the group prioritize and come up with one, single, focused idea that would put skin in the game not just from the school district but also from the other government institutions at the table and as many other stakeholders as we can,” Thomas said. “We pick one idea, and say, we’re going to do this one.”
“Social issues are the ones the school district is least equipped to deal with,” Thomas added. “There are probably more needs than we have resources.”
Eric Olson, the initiatives coordinator for the city of Pensacola and a task force spokesperson, said he agreed with the superintendent that more community involvement was needed to help students who are falling behind. But he added that the school district needed to be more specific about the type of help students need to get on track.
“There is this kind of just general frustration that everyone can feel, which is what is it that we can do as a community,” Olson said. “So, we’re still looking for those. And part of (getting more community involvement) is communication. We don’t know everything that’s already being done (in the school district) and what’s successful.”
“We need to know what the district’s specific needs are.”
One specific need Thomas brought up was more mentors in schools. He also mentioned the need for community involvement at Montclair Elementary, one of the district’s D schools, and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Escambia County Economic Coordinator Tonya Gant, another spokesperson for the task force, said the group is ready to move forward with Thomas’ concerns in mind.
“We will take that suggestion that he gave us and focus on one issue at one school and do something that’s measurable and move forward from there,” Gant said. “When we first came together as a task force, we knew what we were charged to do, but we didn’t know how big that elephant was and what direction that we needed to go in to get done what needs to get done.”
The task force also will present its five proposals to the school board at a meeting Aug. 14.
One of the key points brought up in the presentation Wednesday was the need for mandatory tutoring and mandatory parent participation. The task force suggested making tutoring mandatory for kindergarten through 12th grade students reading below grade level and to make parent participation in that tutoring mandatory.
Thomas said, however, that many parents face tough economic and other challenges that keep them from being able to meet those demands without great expense.
“The reality for some of our families is, it’s not that they don’t want the best for our children,” Thomas said. “They want the same things I do, the same things that I want for my granddaughters. They’re just not in a life circumstance where they’re able to do that.”
“When we start making something mandatory, that’s for 41,000 students,” Thomas added. “The realities of that become much more complex.”
The task force also suggested the district hold mandatory diversity training in the school district to better familiarize teachers with minority cultures and to hold mandatory resource training for school social workers so they’re better aware of the agencies in the community they can reach out to for help for students.
Some programs already are in place at the school district that address the task force’s proposals, said Linda Moultrie, chair of the school board.
“We’re doing some of this stuff already,” Moultrie said. “We might be doing it on a smaller scale and taking baby steps, but I’m encouraged that some of the ideas they brought up we’re already doing because that shows we’re not thinking too far outside the box.”
“But we have to have a single focus in order to bring the connection (between the district and the community) together.”