Interim DeKalb County School Superintendent Mike Thurmond wants to bring back graduation coaches in the district’’s lowest-performing middle and high schools.
It’s part of a plan unveiled Monday night that Thurmond said will better target the district’s federal funding to help the 70 percent of DeKalb students classified as economically disadvantaged.
The district currently receives about $76 million through 10 federal programs, including the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education reform initiative.
Graduation coaches were created statewide a decade ago to give one-on-one attention to students at risk of dropping out. Despite being hailed as a big success, most districts — including DeKalb — eliminated those jobs as the economy weakened and school budgets were slashed.
Under Thurmond’s plan, the graduation coach jobs would be restored, though the specifics were not immediately available. The plans also include creation of a district career academy.
“We need to refocus … we need to figure out how to build bridges for those students,” the superintendent said.”We’re going to utilize what we have in a more effective and efficient manner.”
Some of this will involve revising and redeploying the district’s resources, especially its federal funding, he said.
Too many programs have exited “with little or no evaluation of (their) impact,” Thurmond said.
He said the goal will be to improve student achievement and college readiness. The district already took a step in that direction this year, with the redesigned pre-kindergarten curriculum to align with the new Common Core standards, Thurmond said.
Parents and community activists lined up to speak before the school board Monday about a proposal to create a potentially precedent-setting cluster of charter schools in the North Druid Hills community.
Supporters argued that the charter cluster, which is subject to a school board vote in November, would allow a diverse community to come together with the common goal of improving all schools within the cluster. They also argued that it would allow the community to take an innovative approach to improving their public schools.
Critics told the board that the entire community was not involved in developing or voting for the charter proposal and that it sets up the possibility of another school system operating in DeKalb.
“It’s a start-up program for a new school system in DeKalb County, and that’s wrong,” said Jay Cunningham, a former member of the DeKalb school board.
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