Education Edition - 1736 Magazine, Fall 2019

Students walk past painted murals at W.S. Hornsby Elementary School, which is located in one of Augusta’s poorest neighborhoods.
“I think this year we’re going to have
to do two because we had so many people
I think it might have been a fire hazard,”
said Adkinson, a former assistant principal
at south Augusta’s Glenn Hills High
School.
For Adkinson, the key to improving
Hornsby’s poor academic performance
started with culture before curriculum.
The strategy is showing signs of
success, as Hornsby earlier this year
received Indiana-based Marzano
Resources’ Level I certification for
having a “safe, supportive, collaborative
culture.”
There are four more levels to go
before Marzano deems Hornsby a “High
Reliability School,” but Adkinson is taking
baby steps toward the goal.
“First, we had to come in and change the
mindset of the grown folks and the culture
of the building,” Adkinson said. “After
those two big pieces were under control,
now we had a school.”
INNER-CITY CHALLENGES
Richmond County schools have been a
mixed bag for decades. The metro area’s
most populous county has some of the
region’s highest-performing schools
and some of the worst. Augusta’s urban
core has schools in both categories, from
the award-winning Davidson Fine Arts
Magnet School, which U.S. News and
World Report ranks No. 3 in Georgia, to
T.W. Josey High School, which the state
Governor’s Office of Student Achievement
gives an “F” grade.
The Richmond County School System’s
new superintendent, Dr. Kenneth
Bradshaw, faces the same challenges of
his predecessors: maintaining academic
excellence at the best facilities – which are
primarily magnet schools that attract the
best students from throughout the district
– while improving the quality of the
lower-performing “zoned” schools that
primarily serve specific neighborhoods
mired in poverty.
It’s a daunting task given the income
level of Augusta’s urban core.
Although inner-city neighborhoods are
slowly being repopulated with middleclass
and upper-income families seeking
urban amenities, Census data shows the
majority of households in the urban core
are low-income, minority and headed by
single parents.
While benchmarking Richmond County
schools to other metro area districts –
primarily suburban Aiken and Columbia
counties – is not an apples-to-apples
comparison, Bradshaw acknowledges the
comparison is unavoidable.
“We can’t hide from comparing ourselves
to the CSRA,” he said. “That’s going
to be a natural comparison ... it’s reality.”
Families seeking “good schools” in the
metro area primarily move to Columbia
County, whose school district has an overall
“B” grade from the Governor’s Office,
compared to Richmond County’s “D.”
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