Flomaton Elementary School and Flomaton High School made an 'A' for the first time under the current Alabama Department of Education report card scores. I say current, because I learned new tests to determine school and system report cards will change next year.
FES Principal George Brown and FHS Principal Scott Hammond were proud of the first As those schools ever received under the grading system. I was proud for them. They quickly turned the praise toward their teachers, their students and the parents of the students.
Not to take away from what Brown and Hammond do, but it's teachers in the classroom and parental support that drives the report card scores. I'm not a big proponent of labeling schools with letter grades because I always feel most teachers and administrators work hard to make sure their students learn.
“We can't do it on our own here,” Brown told me this week. “It takes parents to make it work and we couldn't do it without an active PTO.”
There's an old saying about leading a horse to water but not being able to make him drink.
The best teacher in this state may be teaching at an F school. They can't do it by themselves.
In most circumstances, how well a student performs in school depends on the support that student receives at home. Parents need to be held accountable.
Last spring and again this fall I interviewed Brown and Hammond about absences. Chronic absenteeism not only affects a school's report card, it also affects the number of teaching units a certain school may, or may not, receive the next year from state funds. FES lost a unit this year despite the fact it has more students than it had last year.
Brown and Hammond both told me that it not only affects money, it affects a students ability to learn because that student is not in the classroom is not learning.
FES scored 10.93 percent of students who had missed 18 or more days last year and FHS scored 14.01 percent.
The scores across the county showed only 6.37 percent of the students at Pollard-McCall Junior High School had more than 18 absences to W.S. Neal High School which had 26.27 percent of its students miss that many days. Eighteen days is three and a half weeks of school.
When I talked to Brown and Hammond last spring and again this fall, they were quick to say they don't want sick students coming to school.
But then again you have parents who will keep their children out of school for vacations, trips to football games and other reasons – maybe the parent didn't want to get up and take their child to school.
A lot of high school students provide their own way to school. When an elementary school student misses school it falls back on the parent or guardian.
It's probably been 20 years ago but I got to tag along with a drug task force in Escambia County, Fla., which was looking to arrest a Century resident on multiple drug distribution charges. Multiple cruisers hit the street from multiple directions about 2 a.m. on a week day.
They didn't find the guy they were looking for but what I saw was elementary, middle and high school age children riding bicycles and having fun up and down the street. Those same children were expected to be in school the next day. My bet is some didn't show up and the ones that did stayed half asleep most of the day, but then we are quick to blame the teachers or the schools for not being able to teach them.
I've talked to several teachers over the years about those parent-teacher conferences that happen, I think, about twice a year. They are designed to give teachers an opportunity to sit down one-on-one with the parent to go over their child's progress in school. Most teachers have told me it's the most wasted afternoon they spend as an educator. The reason is that the parents of students who are doing well show up; the parents of the ones not doing well don't show up. So teachers are left preaching to the choir about how well a certain student is doing, but they don't get the opportunity to talk to the parents of the students who are falling behind are the ones they really need to talk to.
Remember Brown's words - “We can't do it on our own here”. Let those words sink in.
Schools can only be as good as the support they receive from the parents of students attending those schools. Taking your child out of school to go visit grandma or a trip to Disney World sets a bad example.
