By Ida Brown

ibrown@themeridianstar.com



Enthusiasm was high at a 2008 press conference announcing Charlie T. Kent Jr. as superintendent of the Meridian Public School District.

"This is a momentous event in the life of our community," said President Fred Wile at the morning press conference.

"This a momentous event because the new superintendent will replace Sylvia Autry, who provided visionary leadership in developing a blueprint for the future and is building community recognition of the importance of public education and the support for it," Wile continued.

"Our community requires another powerful leader who can help us move to the next step, take the board's vision, build on Mrs. Autry's accomplishments and put their own distinctive stamp on things."

One year later, all is not necessarily well with the local school district.

In recent weeks, parents, teachers and members of the community have strongly voiced their concerns at several community forums and school board meetings. At issue:

• Reports of violence against students and teachers

• The district's recent bumped down accreditation rating from "accredited" to "advised" after a teacher was caught using a previously administered state test as a study guide for students

• Changes in the school uniform policy

• Teacher morale

• The perceived change in policy regarding MPSD teachers' ability to choose their children's school

While some have described the current state of Meridian's public schools as "a deteriorating situation," Kent said there have been misunderstandings and misperceptions.

The Meridian Public School District superintendent met with The Star's Editorial Board this week to talk about school system, as well as his plans for its future.

The Star: Educationally, how did the first year go?

Kent: The year has gone pretty much as I expected. There are some things that have changed in the state – as well as on the national front – and we're trying to keep up with those. For instance we have a new rating system in the state as compared to what was in place when I came in.

Right now, we are looking at doing some changes – and as we all know, most people do not like change. And that has created a few bumps in the road. Academically, we are not where we want to be, but we are working to get that done.

In a week, the administrative team and I will go to Harvard (University) again for another week of intensive leadership training. That's something we started the year with last year, which worked for us because we had quite a few new administrators when I came in the door – and we are growing them day by day.

When you are trying to grow a staff and you're also trying to get your feet under you – because this was my first year – I had to find out who was doing what, what was the lay of the land. You also have to know the politics of the community, the culture of the community and the climate.

Now we're getting ready to move into the second year, we are doing some planning – we started our planning process at a retreat (last week) and we're moving forward to make the necessary changes that we need to do. Also, listening at the public – of what their concerns are – we have to incorporate their concerns in our plans and do a better job of explaining what we are doing, too.

The Star: Can you explain the Recoverable F?

Kent: I can explain it, but I think we're going to walk away from it. We're going to do something a little bit different … because it really is confusing, even to staff.

The Recoverable F is in essence a way to say that if a child has failed a course – and we use number grades in Meridian (school system) – rather than having a child with a 19 or 20 (which means that he or she has no way of making it up if that is the grade they received at the first quarter) what we were trying to do was, if we looked at the Recoverable F, then that child would have an opportunity to come in and work hard, and he or she could still be successful. If you have a 25 (grade), it is going to be very, very difficult for you to recover from that grade throughout the year. When we have an unsuccessful child, that sometimes will lead to dropout rates. What we're trying to do is change that 21 percent.



We're now going to look at what we call The Biloxi Model. That is, whenever a child fails a test, he or she will have an opportunity to retake it. Anything that they are falling short of, they will have an opportunity to go back and redo, and try to do better. In doing that, whatever is the best grade, that's the grade they will be give, not an averaging of the grades. In other words, we're going to keep them working.







The Star: What is the status of The Ninth Grade Academy?



Kent: Sadly, I'm going to have to say that it is not going to be ready. There was a meeting Monday and the contractors asked for additional time – they asked for 30 days, we granted them 60.



We've had the staff schedules, assigned rooms and we're going do everything with Kate Griffin for the ninth-grade so that we're not far behind. The furniture is still there, because that was our Plan B. We will start the ninth-grade staff and students at KG and somewhere around the end of September, first of October we will be ready to move into the new building. We'll only need three days to move; all we'll have to move in the building are computers, teachers' supplies and whatever because all the furniture will be there.



Parents will be notified of this after Monday's board meeting.







The Star: With the delay in the Ninth Grade Academy, will that affect the Small Learning Communities?



Kent. No. The Small Learning Communities will be set up, and they really start at the sophomore year. The ninth-grade year is more exploratory.







The Star: Are Small Learning Communities still set up as they were originally – as five theme-based communities (BizTech, Community for Advanced Studies, Health, Visual and Performing Arts and Exploratory Studies)?



Kent: Yes. With the exception of the Community for Advanced Studies, we are asking students to also select an area in which they would like to know more about or to explore some options, rather than just have them take academic courses. One of the things we find oftentimes is that students come out of high school without any skills because they don't know how to do anything. We are asking the advanced students to also choose one of those areas and explore.







The Star: We understand the school district has appealed the "advised" accreditation. Explain that appeal process.



Kent: We had to submit a letter to the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) to appeal the rating. The rating does not affect anything that we do or doing. It does not affect any scholarships or anything the student may have received or their getting into a school. What it does it puts us in a watch mode, that for this testing cycle if there are no other irregularities or violations, our status goes back to "accredited" at the end of that testing cycle.



So for the appeal, we're asking them to take it away because we have submitted a plan that they have accepted and we are trying to make sure that there are no loose ends in this testing cycle for us to have anything go wrong. We've been told that it is difficult to get that changed. But in the process we had to go, we had to examine those avenues to make sure that if we did everything that MDE has laid out for us to do, could we have that decision reversed.







The Star: Has the MDE recommended or asked you to discipline anyone in the school district over this issue?



Kent: The won't ask us to reprimand; they leave that to the district. We are taking the necessary precautions and actions that need to be taken. Hopefully, that will satisfy the needs and wants of the state board.







The Star: The question of student transfers (children of teachers) has come up a lot lately – you're saying the policy hasn't been followed. Previously, a teacher could have their child in whatever school they picked, but that's not what the policy states?



Kent: That's not what it states. And by me coming in being the new superintendent, I don't know what promises were made to other staff people or how those things happened. But now that I am here and on my watch is what I'm being held accountable for is administering the policy as it is. The policy states that they should either go to the school in which they work or, if it's grade-appropriate, to the closest school to which they work within that district. Or, if they live in the district, then they should go to the school in which they live in the district.



When we here the term "perks," perks are normally spelled out in contracts. No where have I read or seen anything that references this as a perk. They work for a wage and fringe benefits, and that's all I have to go on.











The Star: Meridian Public School District and you have been in the spotlight lately – not necessarily favorably. Parents and teachers have angrily spoken out against the district and you about violence against students and teachers, policy changes, teacher morale and other concerns. How did it come to this?



Kent: We had a couple of incidents at two of our school that there is a great deal of misunderstanding, misconceptions or perceptions. And there were some who disagreed on how the situations were handled. And we had some situations – and even in both of those situations – happening at the two middle schools and what has been alleged to have happened at the high school, we have some consistency problems that we need to work out.



That's something we also worked on in our retreat and we talked about it at great length – consistency across the district, at the elementary level and the secondary level (the middle schools and high school were grouped as secondary). We need to make sure there is consistency in our district's policy.



There were some things that were mentioned that an assault had occurred at Kate Griffin. There was no assault. A student brought weapons to school and another student reported it. That's how we knew they were there and we acted upon that.



In the incident of the teacher being struck (by a student) at Northwest (Junior High School), the authorities were called, but the parent beat the authorities to the school and took the student out, even though charges were filled against the student.



Sometimes the way the stories are told – by either one party telling another party, or who's telling the story to the media – sometimes it's all in the way the story is told and what the facts are. If we just deal with the facts, because we can't get into details with talk about students and those type of things, but if we just tells the facts as they are, we can go from there.







The Star: There has been a lot of comment about your relationship with the teachers – for instance, how you talk to them during assemblies – and it's impact on their morale. What are you doing to foster a better relationship with the teachers?



Kent: Let me for the record that I was brought in as a change agent. When I take the approach of dealing with staff, I try to do it in a humane way; some people do not understand my dry humor. There is a way that I can be direct and say what I need to say, and sometimes that's a problem. Because if I ask a person to do his or her job, bottom line, that's all I'm asking: do your job.



We have in this community and this school system – whether we want to face it or not – a community culture that we have to change. The school system is not the school system that we had in 1990, when Meridian Public Schools was the No. 1 school district in the state. It's a different district. The population is different, and I am not saying by any means that with the population that we have now we can't get back to being the No. 1 school district in the state. We have to change the way we teach and we have to make school meanable, we have to establish relationships with our students.



And by that same token, I have to establish a relationship with the staff – it may not be the relationship that they want, because I don't want staff or the community to feel that I'm here just trying to run people away, run people over. That's not what I'm saying. I'll give you an easy example of something that I said that has been taken totally out of context.



I made the statement that when you come to work, come to work dressed professionally. If we're going to say we want students to wear uniforms and wear them properly, why can't staff come to work dressed and looking professional? The statement that I made was, "I don't want you coming to work like you're going to the club." I had information that two principals who sent someone home this year to change because they were not dress professionally. That was some information I had to base that decision and that statement on, that other folks took out of context.



Also, if I'm speaking to the whole staff and I want the entire staff to hear what I have to say at the same time, if I make a statement like that and you know it does not apply to you, then it shouldn't bother you.







The Star: Have your revisited your thoughts about having monthly or quarterly for the public meetings you spoke about during your first Editorial Board meeting us last year?



Kent: Yes, that is something we must do. It is a must so that we can keep the community informed as to what we are doing. We just have to come up with an avenue or venue to couch it under how we're going to do it – whether it's going to be a town hall meeting, whether it's going to be an informational meeting with staff people reporting out and we may do a mixture. But we have to get something out. We talked in terms (at the retreat) that at the end of each quarter, we will do something, we have to get something done.



This is one of the better school districts in the state of Mississippi – it is a great place to work, it is a great community to live in. I'm just hoping that the community, the staff and I can get on the same page. My goal is to take the district to where it once was. I know that is a difficult task and I realize that there are some people who are going to say, "We've seen changes come and go, and we'll just wait this one out." But we need to work together. I did not come here to work as the educational leader for this district for some students, I came here to work as the educational leader for all students in Meridian Public School District.



For more questions, specifically about the Uniform Policy, read the online version of this story.



The Star: Tell us about the uniform policy.



Kent: That's another piece that had been put in place prior to my arrival. It was supposed to have last year to the school colors – royal blue and white. When we started talking about it as a staff, the staff recommendation was that we do away with the white – that was for grooming reasons.



But if we're going to stick with that, we will look at the royal blue and white and let's do it as a district. Because right now we have a number of colors based on the different elementary schools having their own colors. That's not really uniform across the district; that is uniform by building. I can understand that because at one time the district was set up based on site-based decision-making. We no longer have site-based decision-making because many of the initiatives that were under that are no longer in the district. Now we have a curriculum that is aligned, K12. So we're trying to align the entire district, not only curriculum-wise, but uniforms as well.



It's been a major piece and so with the discipline committee meeting next week having its first meeting, we've decided that we would also put the uniform piece in with the discipline piece to have the advisory committee that's working with that to look at it as well.







The Star: Why is it better for the students to have a uniform policy than not?



Kent: One, economically, it's a lot cheaper to send students to school in a uniform. You don't have to have 20 uniforms to send a student to school. Two, you don't have to try to keep up with society and all of the changes because it makes so many in the small urban district that we are. And we look at the housing and the low socio-economic status of some of our students; it's more economical to put them in uniforms, rather than have them wear what the world says is okay to wear.







The Star: And that ties into discipline how?



Kent: It ties into discipline because now they are expected to look a certain way, act a certain way. And also, it starts at an early age of teaching them how to dress to be successful in society.