When Superintendent Stanton Lawrence came to the Normandy School District a year and a half ago, he made a point to talk about the heroic schools he studied in Texas.
The study called “Urgency, Responsibility and Efficacy” looked at 10 Texas schools – located in communities challenged by poverty, violence and other social ills – that soared academically beyond general expectations of high-poverty schools.
These schools all used three ingredients to rebuild their districts: creating a sense of urgency for academic achievement, keeping stability among the district’s leaders and setting high expectations.
Normandy will be no different, Lawrence said. And when you ask him where he’ll be in five years, he said he will be the superintendent of a much improved Normandy School District.
Focusing on extracurricular activities, attendance and graduation rates, the district is working towards regaining points to become fully accredited. They have five of the nine points they need.
Apart from the research, Lawrence’s experience growing up in an impoverished neighborhood tells him that the way to turn around struggling schools is to make people want to be there.
In a large district, meeting the needs of everyone can be overwhelming. But Normandy is a small district. The eight elementary schools and one middle school all bottleneck into one high school.
“Size is a great advantage Normandy has,” Lawrence said. “It’s a lot easier to get your hand around a one-high-school feeder system.”
Getting behind the numbers
Over the past four years, the district has lost close to 15 percent of its student population. In 2008, the enrollment was about 4,600, according to data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. In 2005, that number was about 5,600.
The reasons for the loss vary, including economic crisis among families, Lawrence said.
“The really bad part about that is: for years prior to my coming, the district wasn’t aware of the problem and hadn’t kept track,” Lawrence said.
As a result, the district’s money for each student, which comes from the State based on student enrollment, was declining. But the district had not pared down on staff, he said.
“There was a huge disparity between the number of staff and the number of students,” he said. “That’s what necessitated the budget reduction.”
The $1 million reduction made the district lose 40 employees in the middle of the school year. With all the moving around of staff and classes, the district lost one point in its accreditation tally.
However, they gained two points as well. Now the district receives $13,600 for each student, up from $10,300 in 2007. An average teacher makes $56,750.
‘Reach Out to Dropouts’
Lawrence and the district have a strategy to obtain all nine accountability points for accreditation. The low-hanging fruit points, as he says, are attendance and graduation rates.
That’s why this August, Lawrence and staff members went to knock on 100 students’ doors as part of “Reach Out to Dropouts.” Out of that effort, they got back 30 students.
Every year that Lawrence was a teacher or principal in public schools, he would go out and knock on doors.
“For that small investment of time, the kind of yield I got made it worth it, because parents really got behind me,” he said.
He continues to talk to Normandy principals about the value of going to talk with a parent or grandparent face to face.
“Generally, when they see that you’re that invested in what you’re doing, they are willing to get behind you,” he said. “And you see a huge difference in how a child carries himself.”
As far as Lawrence is concerned, the district has no choice. In the study, district leaders created in their communities a sense of urgency for the improvement of academic achievement. In everything the district initiates, the idea of immanence must be apparent.
A new sense of pride
But that doesn’t mean education should be a stressful experience.
“I told our principals that we can’t expect our kids to come to school and not have other things to what I call ‘hook’ them, whether you’re talking about athletics or debate or chess,” he said.
Middle school is where the district starts to see students fall academically and socially, he said.
“If you don’t have something for them to do that interests them and motivates them to do well, you’re setting them up to fail,” he said.
This is the first year the district has offered competitive sports in middle school. The football team only lost one game this year. Athletics builds character and camaraderie, which is so important in these neighborhoods, he said.
Lawrence challenged principals to offer 10 new activities for students this year.
At Belridge Elementary, those include a double-dutch club, cheerleading, and a “Pretty in Pink” sewing club. With 98 percent attendance, principal Sonya Murray said there is a direct correlation to academic success in her school and extracurricular activities.
Although the students are used to making due with the resources available, Lawrence wants to make sure students have just as many resources as other students in other districts.
Last year, Lawrence went to visit Kirkwood High School and saw their workout facility for the sports teams. He knew he couldn’t expect their students to compete with the workout room that had weight equipment “from when I was in high school,” he said.
The new premiere workout facility is not only good for the students’ health, but it instills a sense of pride in their school.
“With anything you do, it starts with the school decorum, where students feel comfortable, safe and secure,” said Curt Green, principal at Normandy High. “If you can do that, then more individuals will want to come to school.”
Connecting to learning
Coming from Texas, Lawrence immediately recognized that the State’s standardized test, the MAP test, has a high standard compared to other States and the national standard.
“Folks who have been living here their whole lives aren’t aware how difficult it is,” he said.
Lawrence thinks the high standards will only help. And since he’s been in Normandy, he’s starting to see the shift in teachers and principals to agree with that. Expect more, he tells them.
At Normandy High, charts, graphs and comments from the teachers on the students’ work are posted outside every classroom.
“We want teachers to connect the standards that they are being taught with the type of assessment methods they will see in the spring time (when MAP is administered),” Green said. “So, no surprises.”
Even though Green’s main areas of focus are communication arts and math, every classroom is dedicated to posting this data.
“The system we’re using is a lot of work for teachers,” said James Felix, an English teacher. “I have a basic philosophy: Nobody ever fails because they want to. Teachers are the same way, too. As teachers, we don’t really know we’re failing until it’s too late.”
At Belridge, the teachers are focused on cooperative learning. “The teacher has taken the role of the facilitator rather than being the person standing in front of the class lecturing,” Murray said.
At Lucas Crossing Elementary, mathematics teacher Tiffany McConnell said she encourages her students to express themselves mathematically. Each student has a math journal where they explain their thoughts about the problems at hand. She has aligned her classroom instruction to meet DESE demands that the students think strategically and reason in math, she said.
“Students are becoming independent thinkers,” she said. “They must solve complex problems and justify their answers in math.”
Poverty and schools
Jeff Spiegel, superintendent of the Ferguson-Florissant School District, has produced a chart of Missouri 524 school districts. In it, Normandy places second for the largest proportion of black students, with 99.2 percent. Wellston School District was first with 100 percent.
What follows the same trend line on the graph are students living in poverty. And what mirrors that line again is performance of students academically.
“It’s no secret that attendance is lower because the students are grappling with issues that their more affluent counterparts don’t have to deal with on a day-to-day basis,” Lawrence said.
But there are districts with Normandy’s demographics that are performing at high levels, he said. And what happens in the students’ home situations shouldn’t determine their performance – or be an excuse.
Lawrence believes in what he does because he came from the same background as his students, “tit for tat,” he said.
“It’s not a coincidence that all my career – every principalship I’ve ever had – has been in a school district just like I was raised in,” he said.
He is the second in line out of 12 brothers and sisters who grew up in the projects. His parents had a hard time feeding and clothing the lot of them, he said.
“When I watch the kids come through the doors, I see my family,” he said.
In his hometown in Texas, near the Louisiana border, he estimates that two out of three men grew up to have a substance problem. Even within his family, he has seen it.
When he graduated high school, he went to work with his dad at the oil refinery. He was a ditch digger for one year.
“What better motivation to go to college?” he said. “After spending hot summers and cold winters with my hands on a shovel, I was ready.”
Lawrence got his first job in seventh grade and believes that hard work kept him clear of trouble. In these struggling areas, he said it’s even more important to promote hard work among the students.
“Dr. Lawrence has high expectations for our students, for our parents, for everyone,” Murray said. “He has made it clear that he intends for us to become a world-class school district.”
