‘Bold action.’ A Columbus school will be converted into a center for struggling students

The superintendent calls it a “pioneering proposal.” Tuesday night, the Muscogee County School District board unanimously approved it.

MCSD now is authorized to work with the Atlanta-based Rollins Center for Language and Literacy, the Georgia Department of Education and community partners to develop and implement what the administration describes in the agenda as “an innovative, scientific, evidence-based” literacy and numeracy acceleration center.

The purpose is to help struggling students in kindergarten through second grade close their learning gaps and improve their academic achievement.

The center’s students will come from four of MCSD’s lowest-ranked elementary schools on the state standardized tests: Brewer, Davis, Dorothy Height and Martin Luther King Jr., and it will be located at Brewer.

Those schools also were chosen because of their proximity, MCSD superintendent David Lewis told the board during last week’s work session. The longest distance between them in south Columbus is 3 miles.

According to the plan, a disproportionately large number of children at these schools are academically below grade level in reading and math. This situation leads to predictable frustration and low educational attainment through their school years, then reduced opportunities and limited upward mobility as adults.

Eligible students

MCSD will use results from the state’s standardized tests in the Georgia Milestones Assessment System and other data to identify students eligible for this program.

In time for the start of next year school year in August, Brewer will be repurposed from an elementary school into the K-2 center. That means students who have been attending Brewer but aren’t selected for the center will be rezoned and assigned to another school. MCSD will provide bus transportation for selected and rezoned students if needed.

Staff for the center will be chosen based on their college degrees, certification, experience and “passion for and commitment to the mission and additional professional learning,” the presentation says.

The center’s instructional and administrative staff will receive $3,000 added to their salary as compensation for the increased expectations, plus extra hourly pay for after-hours training, tutoring and conferencing.

To advise the center, MCSD will establish a committee comprising outside experts, staff, parents and other community representatives.

Project timeline

The presentation includes the following project timeline:

Feb. 21-29: Present the plan to the four school communities involved.

February-March: Advertise the center’s job openings, interview candidates and finalize staffing.

April 22-May 31: Train the selected staff on “high-yield literacy and numeracy strategies.” Identify qualifying students and conduct meetings with parents.

June-July: Finalize bus transportation for selected and rezoned students, then notify parents.

Why this plan now?

During the board’s Feb. 12 work session, Lewis acknowledged the project’s “short timeline, but I’m not willing to lose 450 more students and leave them behind.”

That’s why, Lewis said, “We’ve got to take bold action. We cannot have incremental improvement.”

This plan stems from Lewis’ adamant intention to help all MCSD students.

Since the board hired Lewis 11 years ago, MCSD is at all-time highs or exceeds the cohort, state or national averages in the major metrics. For example, MCSD’s graduation rate has improved from 72.8% in 2013 to 93.5% in 2023, the 11th consecutive year outperforming the state average and the ninth outperforming the national average.

But for the third straight year, Muscogee County surpassed the state average on only one of the 27 Georgia Milestones tests for grades 3-12 during the 2022-23 school year: eighth-graders who took high school physics.

“Every child, regardless of income, family structure or racial and ethnic background is capable of learning when taught and supported effectively,” Lewis said, “and that begins first with learning to read in order to read to learn.”

Lewis asserted, “If predictable variability is a problem, then differentiation of resources and support is a solution. This is a relatively new way of thinking about equity. Equity does not mean equal resources; it means equal opportunity. … We have a moral, ethical and economic imperative to provide a meaningful and systemic early intervention to address the needs of these children caught in this cycle.”

Lewis summarized the center’s goal when he said, “In essence, we want to equip children – all children – to address that gap. … Close the gap and raise the bar at the same time — hard work, heavy lift, not easy to do.”

Too often, grants and other short-term support targeted toward such students produces temporary progress, but regression sets in when the funding runs out, Lewis said.

“We have to have a sustained model to work with these children,” he said. “… If we do this right — and I believe we will — we can set the standard for success that can be replicated across our district, the state and any place else that suffers from the same cycle that our children do in these particular schools.”

Monday night, Lewis thanked the board for unanimously supporting the plan “on behalf of all the children who’ll be served and afforded the opportunity to determine their own destiny and their own future.”

Estimated cost

Responding to the Ledger-Enquirer’s questions, Lewis said the estimated start-up cost for the program is $1.2 million to hire more personnel for a student-teacher ratio at the center that will be lower than regular schools.

“In addition to the reallocation of current resources, the cost will be defrayed by $600,000 by leveraging available state funding, an additional $200,000 from federal entitlement funds, and other financial investments by United Way and the Georgia Department of Education,” Lewis said via email.

The estimated annual cost to continue the program will vary, he said, depending on the number of qualifying students. The center’s enrollment also will vary, he said, depending on the number of qualifying students.

Lewis didn’t provide a range for either of those figures, but he did say Brewer will have an additional 11 teachers, a literacy coach, a math coach, a speech and language pathologist, a social worker and an interventionist on the staff.