GREENBRIER COUNTY (WVDN) – The Greenbrier County Board of Education heard from the middle and high school Local School Improvement Councils (LSICs) on Thursday, Feb. 24, outlining where each school stands.
For Greenbrier West High School, Vice Principal Lewis McClung presented the LSIC’s results to the board of education. The LSIC hoped to increase the graduation rate, increase attendance, and increase SAT tests over the past year.
While this year’s school SAT administered test is in April, so there is no data available for the last goal, the graduation rate has actually decreased. In the 2019-2020 school year, 95.44 percent of students graduated in four years, while that number had fallen to 85.71 percent in the 2020-2021 school year.
Of the 112 ninth grade students, 34 failed a class in the first semester. Of the 92 10th grade students, 19 failed a class in the first semester. Of the 93 junior students, 26 first a class in the first semester. Of the 100 seniors, nine failed a class in the first semester.
“Of course, our major goals on the strategic plan are centered around increasing our graduation rates, which unfortunately lately has been down,” McClung said. “… We have recognized our deficiencies and there are fairly obviously we’ve come up with some action steps that we’re going to try to take to address these needs.”
To combat this, the council is setting “every student with an adult mentor,” meeting individually with every student to sign them up for credit recovery, identifying “at risk” students, and conducting “school grade level meetings to discuss results of the first semester.”
The LCIS report also notes discipline records, giving a “percent discipline referrals” statistic for each grade – freshmen at 42 percent, sophomores at 32 percent, juniors at 19 percent, and seniors at 8 percent. McClung also noted, “a lot of those are our repeat offenders. A lot of those, you’re dealing with maybe five or six different referrals.”
“Just to reiterate a little bit about what [Western Greenbrier Middle School Principal Marsha Podisadlik] said, discipline has been very high this year,” McClung said. “You can blame that, like a lot of things, [on COVID], but I’m getting tired of the COVID excuse for things like that. Discipline has been probably at an all-time high for our schools.”
For attendance, the school is “continuously” holding truancy diversion meetings and — as mentioned by GWHS’s student representatives to the board of education in a recent meeting — setting up school decorating contests with the theme of “attendance matters.”
Greenbrier West’s LSIC wish list includes a number of vape sensors in classrooms for teachers, so kids using odorless versions of these products in class can be found. An indoor security guard is also on the wish list.
“If we were unable to get another security guard, it would be almost more beneficial for us to have our security guard at the gate actually in the building,” McClung said.
In addition to McClung, the Greenbrier West High School LSIC members include principal Amy Robertson, counselor Sharon Boggs, counselor Samantha Hicks, teacher Angela Leef, teacher Sandra Byers, teacher A. Stimson, teacher Jared Robertson, service personnel Cheryl Dufour, bus driver Charles Bowles, and parents Davina Agee and Romona Poticher.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.