Warrington Prep Academy set out with big plans to bring changes. Are they for the better?

When Charter Schools USA took over the former Warrington Middle School building, it came with a reputation.

In a few months’ time, the campus was renamed to Warrington Preparatory Academy and renovated into an environment that Charter Schools USA hoped would help the community regain a sense of school pride. Now adorned with blue accent walls, the Warrington Prep crest in the gymnasium center, Apple desktop computers lining the tech labs and grass regrown in the courtyard where water once flooded, the building is physically unrecognizable from the middle school the state ordered to close in 2022 after a decade of low-scoring state report cards.

But administrators knew the school required more than a facelift to address the complexities of the school’s challenges. It would require a collective culture shift, and it would take parents signing on to trust the school’s changes.

Earning the community’s trust was a difficult starting place, due to a drawn-out contract negotiation between Charter Schools USA and the Escambia County School Board, and lurking skepticism from the Warrington community. But when the first day of school rolled around, students’ shirts and jackets monogrammed with Warrington Prep logos, some students started feeling hopeful this might actually be different.

And no one wanted a fresh start more than eighth-grade student Termaine Smith.

Some students see new school as fresh start

Warrington Prep Academy Principal Erica Foster remembers hearing Smith’s name on the very first day of school. He was trying to transfer back to Warrington Prep after being sent to Camelot Academy, a public alternative school in Pensacola, the year before. She took a long look at his records.

“I just can’t do it,” she remembers saying of letting him stay.

Camelot didn’t feel he was ready for the traditional classroom, and neither did Foster. Until Smith came to her pleading for another chance.

He made his appeal to her, and to Coach Lutimothy May, who stepped in as the school’s head basketball coach.

“Don’t let them send me back,’” May remembers Smith crying out to him after the basketball team’s try-out. “I can’t make it out there. I need you. I need this school.”

Smith explained to Foster how he was “going through some stuff” when his behavior was at a low, leading to his collection of missed classes and record of referrals. He promised to be the kid that he knew he should be.

May went to bat for him, saying, “I’ll do all I can. Put the responsibility on me.”

Seeing Smith’s sincerity, Foster told him if he wanted to be there, she would find a way to help him stay. But if at any point he felt his old ways creep in, he was to let her know first.

“Yes, mam,” Smith assured.

She watched him become a leader on the school’s basketball team, giving 110% at every practice. He became the student who helps quiet the rest of the class down when it’s too noisy and stops to pick up trash in the hallway. He hugs his teachers. He has zero referrals and landed a place on the school’s honor roll.

“He is a model student,” Foster said Wednesday. “He invited me to church when he got baptized. I cried the whole time. That kid really changed my perspective on what I can do here, and what is needed here – and that’s love.”

Smith represents one of many students attending Warrington Preparatory Academy who are seeing the school change as a fresh start. Foster will tell you she is not in the business of “saving” children - she believes there is only one Savior that can do that - but she is about giving them the opportunity to choose a different path for their life.

“This is a second-chance school,” May echoed. “Several people asked me to come help. I came, and lo and behold, it was a pool full of opportunity.”

May said that he feels the school serves “a community that has been given a false narrative,” and it was part of his job to help be a bridge.

The basketball team that almost never took off

The school struggled to have enough boys to fill the basketball team last year, so May went into try outs this year hoping for 12. When he showed up to the gym that day, he had 80 young men staring back at him, ready to run. Before he ran a single drill, he told them that whatever history they brought to the gym with them, today was a new beginning. They have not had a single discipline issue, according to May.

Although May was prepared to give his players a fresh slate, some of their history stuck with them when it came to eligibility to face other teams within the Escambia County School District. Several Warrington Prep players were found to be ineligible, due to factors such as academic history.

They could have removed the ineligible players from their team, but Foster and May left the choice up to the students. They refused to leave anyone behind, and the word “family” is part of the chant when they put their hands in. Now, the season is back on, as they are able to face off with other private schools and charters instead.

The basketball team has not only helped to foster community within the school but given the students something to look forward to.

Violence and vandalism – how the new school is tackling discipline

Issues like fighting and vandalism that were present at the old Warrington Middle School have not entirely vanished when making the transition to Warrington Prep.

Eighth-grade student Senaai Ransom said the loudness of the students in the school annoys her and tempts her into her old ways of fighting.

While she feels her anger “sets her back” and has resulted in frequent suspensions in past years, she simultaneously has dreams of making the honor roll and becoming a pediatric nurse one day. She feels the classes at Warrington Prep can help get her there.

“There are good teachers here,” Ransom said.

The school’s counselors have helped her with resisting urges to fight and keeping her focus on her schoolwork.

Beside tumultuous transition periods, where students have been provoking students from other classes in the hallways, the school is also dealing with issues of frequent vandalism, according to Foster.

Their maintenance team was made aware that at any sign of graffiti on school property needed to be removed, but it was becoming a project every other hour like clockwork.

When there weren’t obscenities on the walls, there was ink smeared across them from broken markers. Then it was the toilets. Foster said that even after having a conversation with students trying to figure out the heart of why they were causing destruction to their own school, the incidences still escalated.

“Why are we doing this to our school? This is ours,” she remembers telling them.

Eventually the toilets were clogged with paper, flooding multiple classrooms.

Foster thought back to her mother, a veteran elementary school teacher. She remembered that at the elementary level, students spend the day based out of one classroom where they learn routines, build classroom culture and minimize transitions. She figured, why not do the same for seventh-graders?

For the time being, all seventh-grade teachers are teaching their students every subject, but students are permitted to leave for a lunch break and to go to the restroom when needed. She considers this new schedule, which has been implemented for just over a week, to be a temporary reset for the class versus a punishment.

Some parents find new tactics too extreme

Jacquie Sailor, mother to a seventh-grade son at Warrington Prep, wrote a letter to the school when she found out about her son’s “lock-down.”

She had homeschooled her son last school year after feeling like he was not receiving a sufficient education at Warrington Middle, but reintroduced him to Warrington Prep this school year.

She believes keeping students in their classrooms all day was unfair to students like her son, an honor roll student, who she feels are being unjustly punished. She said at first, her son’s teacher restricted students from using the restroom when needed.

After a conversation with Foster and school administration, she learned his teacher misinterpreted the school’s new schedule, and students were allowed to leave to use the restroom when they needed to. She also felt that the lunches that were given in their classrooms, averaging 326 calories, were not sufficient and contributed to treating students as though they were “less than.”

Though she says she understands why the school is taking this approach to modify behavior, she is not hopeful that it will help with the bullying she says her son regularly experiences and the constant “fear of getting jumped.”

Foster, however, is optimistic about the transition students are making to the new school and procedures, but wants people to be patient.

“I started listening to the students. I think the kids were crying out for more adult positive attention and the opportunity to be children,” Foster said. “Warrington is hard, but it’s rewarding. That’s why I’m here.”

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Warrington Prep Academy starts first school year in Escambia County