Metro Spirit - 09.07.17

V28|NO36
“We have children, right now, that
we feed dinner to every school
day. Even in the summer. Because
food is a problem for
our children.”
— Dr. Angela Pringle,
Richmond County Superintendent of Schools
performing extremely well, such as Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School which was
ranked fifth in the state by U.S. News & World Report of the best high schools in
2017, Pringle pointed out that many of the other Richmond County schools are also
excelling.
“Some of our highest performing schools are actually Blythe and McBean. Those
are two of our highest performing, non-magnet schools,” Pringle said. “So the reality
is, we have good work going on everywhere, including schools such as Warren Road
Elementary. A lot of the schools are doing really well in the west end of the county and
the south end of the county, but we have a challenge right at that Deans Bridge Road
corridor. Right on down past Josey High School all the way up to the Jamestown area.”
Ever since Pringle was hired as superintendent in 2014, she has been studying the
issues in those areas of the county.
“I think I have identified it over and over and over,” Pringle said. “There is the same
curriculum. We pretty much use the same hiring process for teachers and staff and we
use the same assessments. But the difference is when you really look at the children,
the support that they need to reach and access that curriculum varies from school to
school.”
Some of the students in the lower performing schools simply don’t have a strong
support system at home, she said.
“The children at Jenkins-White, the children at Wilkinson Gardens, the children at
Meadowbrook have a totally different set of support systems than the children at
some of higher performing schools,” Pringle said. “It is just amazing to me.”
Currently, about 25 percent of the family households in Richmond County are living
in poverty. That means many school children in Richmond County are facing serious
issues such as hunger and poor health care, Pringle said.
“We knew that our children were hungry, so we really had to work to get all of our
children at the breakfast table,” Pringle said, adding that Richmond County provides
students with free breakfast and lunches each day. “But now we have them at the
dinner table. That’s where we are, folks. We have children, right now, that we feed
dinner to every school day. Even in the summer. Because food is a problem for our
children.”
The reality is serious and cannot be ignored, Pringle said.
“Oftentimes, students are coming home, we have about 300 homeless children, and
they go home without food,” she said. “So we feed them dinner, and we will increase
that program because it is really a federally funded program.”
Pringle said Richmond County schools are also focused on providing students with
a quality education, but it is challenging at times.
“There were 7,000 children in summer school this summer. That is not funded,”
Pringle said. “We had to really find the money for that. That keeps us from paying
those teachers that we need to be high performing.”
The health of the students across the county is also a constant concern, she said.
“So many of our children come to school ill; their teeth are aching because they
don’t have good health care,” Pringle said. “All of these things are what we refer to as
wraparound services that are not funded through the schools.”
Richmond County has several community groups and local organizations trying to
help address some of these health issues facing children, but they are not working in
a “consolidated or cohesive fashion,” Pringle said.
7SEPTEMBER2017
“They are all kind of working on their own,” she said. “It can still work, but the reality
is they aren’t moving in the same direction.”
In order to properly educate and steer a child towards graduation, Pringle said
support needs to start before a student even enters an elementary school.
“When children come to school in kindergarten and they arrive at school from highpoverty
families, typically they are already behind,” she said. “Believe it or not, we have
children who arrive at kindergarten, they barely know their names. And they certainly
don’t have those early literacy skills that they need.”
In many cases, children from middle-income families who are struggling with
schoolwork will get extra parental support or even tutorial services if needed, Pringle
said.
“A child in poverty sits home,” she said. “By middle school, basically those children
never, ever catch up. They never catch up.”
So, it has become the school system’s new mission to reach out to children even
before kindergarten, Pringle said.
“Public school starts at kindergarten, but really you have to think about what
happens from the time the child is born until they arrive at school,” she said, adding
that for many years, Richmond County had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the
state. “We haven’t recovered from that. Those children are now in elementary school.”
While some Richmond County residents who don’t have any children might not care
about the current state of the public school system, City Administrator Janice Allen
Jackson insisted that they should be concerned because schools can greatly impact
the value of a housing market.
In fact, a school district with a poor reputation can drop the value of a home by
about 22 percent, and it can hurt a home’s value more than the close proximity of a
strip club, homeless shelter or a cemetery, she said.
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