LUMBERTON — Five Robeson County public schools are on the list of schools that qualify for absorption by the Innovative School District, but that is not a reason to panic, according to a local education leader.

“It’s a warning,” John Campbell, chairman of the Board of Education for the Public Schools of Robeson County, said Monday.

Sixty-nine low-performing schools from across North Carolina are on the list released Thursday by the State Board of Education. No. 7 on the list is Townsend Middle School. Lumberton Junior High is No. 26; Orrum Middle, No. 27; Fairmont Middle, No. 30; and Rex-Rennert, No. 66.

“I’m not concerned about them taking over one of our schools,” Campbell said.

A school is placed on this “qualifying list” based on past performance, he said. But, with all that has been done to improve performance and all that district leaders plan to do to improve academic performance, with help from the state Department of Public Instruction, he is not pessimistic about the prospect of another local school being taken over by the Innovative School District.

Southside-Ashpole Elementary School, in Rowland, is the only school in the ISD, which was created by the N.C. General Assembly in 2016. After first fighting ISD’s takeover of the school, the county Board of Education relinquished control of Southside-Ashpole in January 2018. The ISD began running the school at the start of the 2018-19 academic year.

“It’s a long process,” Campbell said.

The current selection process will last about four years, he said. Certain things have to happen over those years. The first thing is the issuing of the qualifying list. A watch list is issued the next year, and a warning list the year after that.

But schools on the warning list can be removed if a school district can present data showing academic improvement, Campbell said. A lot of things can change during the selection process.

The list is not on the agenda for Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, he said. If it comes up at all it will be an informational item only. The board meets at 6 p.m. in Lumberton City Hall, located at 500 N. Cedar St. The Robesonian will live stream the meeting on Facebook.

“The ISD oversees the transfer and operation of select public elementary schools and puts them under the management of qualified Innovative School Operators. The State Board of Education expects to select five qualifying schools for transfer to the ISD over the next few years. The ISD will start with one school in the initial 2018-2019 academic school year. Additional schools are expected to be selected and transferred to the ISD in the coming years,” according to the Innovative School District’s website.

The selection process that saw the ISD take control of Southside-Ashpole has been altered by a bill that automatically became law on Monday because Gov. Roy Cooper did not sign in to law or veto Senate Bill 522 in the time allotted after it was approved by the General Assembly.

In a letter this past week to State Board of Education Chairman Eric Davis, Cooper reiterated his opposition to the Innovative School District and asked that the Education Board prioritize in its short-session budget request the supporting funds and programs needed to help North Carolina’s lowest-performing schools improve.

“Turning over control of a public school to a private charter school operator is both bad policy and ineffective, and I am fundamentally opposed to the ISD concept,” Cooper said in his letter. “Senate Bill 522 does make some positive improvements to the ISD, including providing a way for low-performing schools to improve before being subject to take over.”

The bill lays out the criteria for schools being placed on the qualifying, watch and warning lists.

It also stipulates, “The State Board of Education shall ensure that qualifying schools identified for any ISD list are engaged in strategies in compliance with federal and state law for comprehensive support and improvement.”

The new law also directs local boards of education to identify and engage in the improvement strategies.

The law directs the State Board of Education to select a school for inclusion in the ISD at the beginning of the next school year only if:

— The school was on the ISD warning list in the previous school year.

— The school remains a qualifying school in the current school year based on data from the previous school year.

— The school is one of the lowest five schools that meet the bill’s criteria as measured by school performance scores.

The new law also allows a local school board to ask the State Board of Education to select a qualifying school for inclusion in the ISD if fewer than five schools are selected by the state Education Board, “provided that no more than five schools are selected for that year in total.”

Cooper
https://www.robesonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/web1_Roy-Cooper-1.jpgCooper

Campbell
https://www.robesonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/web1_Campbell-John-2-1.jpgCampbell

T.C. Hunter

Managing editor

Reach T.C. Hunter via email at [email protected] or by calling 910-816-1974.