Ms Jheri Worldwide
Staff Writer
On September 5th at Southeast Raleigh Magnet High School Ms. Toshiba Rice, District four Board of Education and Ms. Tara Waters, District five County Board of Commissioners hosted an impactful workshop for parents, community leaders, and changemakers. The event goals were to engage with elected officials, learn about ways to navigate the Wake County Public School System with specific strategies for supporting students and families, and to share avenues for organizations to navigate how to support WCPSS students and families. This information rich event was organized in three sections the first data rotation, the second and academic rotation, and finally student support services.
The first section I attended was a deep dive on the student support services hosted by Dr. Corliss Thompson-Drew, Vanessa Barnes, and Tanyeyta Sutton. This team shared details about clinical services, suicide prevention, and other care coordination services. There were also details about after hours support services. My biggest take away from this section was that the school system has services at different tiers available to students and families. Also that no family in crisis is ever turned away due to financial constraints. Individual school guidance offices can help funnel students and families through these opportunities to unpack the correct resources.
The next section that I attended was about academics, Drew Cook shared with us a parent guide to student achievement, which is available online in English and Spanish. They’re also different homework resources for multiple grade levels and also opportunities for a single service acceleration to help students get ahead early. A key takeaway here was that the majority of these resources are available online on the WCPSS website. When it comes to academics, exploring the website and reaching out to the applicable parties will help parents and families with resources from homework help to extracurricular resources. It was mentioned, there are students who are not being challenged enough, there are resources available online for these students as well.
The final and most impactful session hosted by Dr. Clint Robinson was outlining data. There were many compelling data points and some disturbing. An important data point would be that student proficiency on end of grade testing appears to be the same or slightly increased for the majority of ethnic groups. A disturbing statistic on student discipline shows that 70% of student discipline suspension incidents occurs amongst black students 48% amongst black males. To compare, male students show 69% of suspension incidents and female 31%. Asian male student suspensions are recorded as one percent, multiracial 2%, white 5%, hispanic 13%, and again black male 48%. Black female students were recorded at 22%, the only double digits suspension data point shared. This is alarming, and it shows that there needs to be more support for social and behavioral elements of the education process.
Southeast Raleigh Magnet High School Principal Harden was present at the event and asked an important question regarding how does the community get involved with Wake County Public School Systems on a school by school level? The answer shared is that there is a request for proposals put out every spring for organizations to apply for WCPSS community partnerships. Keep an eye out on the website or email communitypartnerships@wcpssnet for more information. This event was informative and well executed. The work is being done and there will be more details to come.
