The next education challenge: Overcoming apathy

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Posted February 25, 2022 | By Rosemarie Dowell, Correspondent

When Marion County School Board Member Allision Campbell decided to delve into recent statistics on student expulsions, she found a disconcerting theme of at least one D or F on their report cards.

But what she found out in a mid-year report she requested from district staff soon after, was in her words, “beyond alarming.”

Roughly half of the district’s middle and high school students, or more than 11,000, received a D or F in the fall of 2021, the report showed, and a majority of their parents, 7,000 in all, had not logged into Skyward to check their student’s grades last semester, although some may have used their child’s login instead of going through the parent portal.

Since revealing the jaw-dropping report during a Feb. 8 school board meeting, which also included dismal attendance data, Campbell has been on a mission to change the statistics before the end of the school year.

“This is a call to action for the community: I’m going to bring it up at every school board meeting and I’m gonna keep talking about this until we see some change,” said Campbell, prior to Tuesday’s (Feb. 22) regular board meeting.

“While parent engagement is a big piece of the puzzle, I think it’s more student apathy than parent apathy,” she said. “Students are just not as engaged as before; the pandemic certainly hasn’t done us any favors.”

Campbell said bringing back mandatory regular parent-teacher conferences, and recruiting mentors from the community to tutor students during lunch may provide answers to the issues.

Spring open houses, with face-to-face interaction between parents and teachers, may also help, she said, since fall events were canceled because of COVID-19.

“I’d like us to be hyper-focused on this between March and May,” said Campbell. “I know that may be a lofty idea and goal, but if we approach it as a team effort, with everyone from students to parents to the community to churches, we may be able to change the trajectory and help our students that are struggling.”

The first-term board member has doesn’t-need-to-be-said support from her fellow colleagues.

“The data was there and Campbell has shined a light on it,” said the Rev. Eric Cummings, school board chair, who also said parent-teacher conference, whether in person or virtual, might help hold struggling students accountable, along with before and after-school tutoring, and summer school.

“We do need more parent involvement, but we don’t want to be adversarial either,” he said. “Let’s be real, a lot of things the school system does can be intimidating to working parents who don’t have the resources and technology available to help their child.”

“The answer is better communication from all parties,” said Cummings. “We as a district need to stop talking in acronyms and things parents aren’t familiar with, but parents need to be accessible as well.”

Many students getting a failing grade in middle or high school likely had struggles in elementary school too, he said.

“It’s probably not the first time they got a D or F,” said Cummings, who recently filed for reelection. “We need to go back to see what happened to them in first, second, third, or fourth grade and address the system at a lower level.”

Having consistent standards from groups or individuals already tutoring or mentoring students may also help, he said.

School Board member Nancy Thrower said the pandemic caused havoc on education the past two years, with quarantines and illness from COVID affecting everyone from students to parents to teachers and staff.

“The number of Ds or Fs are not a surprise to me and they likely are higher than in the past,” she said. “We’ve had two years of educational interruption; it’s glaringly obvious the pandemic has had a detrimental effect on our students.”

Thrower, also up for reelection, said a back-to-basics approach, including parental involvement, which statistics prove drops off at the secondary level, is key to bringing up grades and attendance.

“We’ve got to get parents more involved and go back to the basics,” she said. “But we’ve also got the challenge of really helping the community understand the issues and make education our top priority across the board.”

In the end, Thrower said, it’s about doing the simple things over and over again, like parents checking their kid’s schoolwork each night, and community members being vested in the success of students.

“We need a full-court press: education is everyone’s responsibility,” she said. “We’ve got to implement changes to have the best culture in place for learning.”

Campbell said she just wants to see a change by the end of the fourth quarter.

“It’s time for us to attack this from all sides,” said Campbell, who has a slate of meetings with community members, teachers, groups and churches planned to address the issue.

“We need to come up with a plan, and create strategies and tactics to implement them,” she said. “I want to see a significant shift by the end of the school year.”