Robbinsville – As the pandemic wears on, Graham County Schools continue to show higher numbers of students in danger of failing classes.
Robbinsville High School Principal David Matheson and Robbinsville Middle School Principal Tonia Walsh both said their schools were continuing to see an increased number of students at risk of failing classes. Matheson has expressed concerns about the number of students in past meetings and both administrators also expressed concerns about attendance.
“When the kids are not in school, they’re not completing assignments,” Matheson said. “We’ve got lots of kids three weeks into the semester that are already failing classes pretty bad.”
He said approximately 65 of his students were now attending school on a four-day-a-week schedule, with them not coming to school on Wednesdays.
“That’s going really well,” Matheson said.
He said some students were also participating in an after-school credit recovery program, to earn credits for courses failed in the fall semester. While he said the credit recovery program was going well, he emphasized that the issue had not changed much with the new semester.
“We had progress reports go out on Friday,” Matheson said. “I’m very worried about the number of kids we have that are not doing their work.”
Walsh said her teachers were meeting regarding the failures to try to come up with solutions. She also spoke to the mental side of the issue.
“We have anywhere from 5-30 kids failing every course that we have,” Walsh said. “Everybody’s losing motivation and struggling. Our teachers are planning on meeting (Wednesday) and coming up with some new and creative ideas to try to add some spark.
“We’re just not getting to do anything fun. We’re just kind of losing our motivation.”
As of now, 26 middle school students are completing assignments fully remote, and 37 students are attending four days a week.
“Some of those are students with special needs, and the rest of those are students that we have called and given that opportunity because they were failing and struggling,” Walsh said.
Despite the academic difficulties, Walsh reported a minimal number of students and staff at the middle school being impacted by the coronavirus.
“We have had no spread in the middle school,” Walsh said. “We have only had, I think, three students overall test positive.”
She said this three students had contract the virus from sources outside of the middle school. One teacher also tested positive, but had a mild case.
Robbinsville Elementary School Principal Jaime Hooper reported that the coronavirus situation at her school had improved greatly from the beginning of the semester, when seven classes and several staff members were in quarantine. She said none of the cases among the school population had been severe.
“It got a little scary,” Hooper said. “I had seven classes in quarantine, and I had up to 16 staff members that were out in quarantine. Having 16 people out is very, very hard to recover. We were thin.”
She emphasized that the cases came from community spread, not spread within the school.
“Our numbers are looking a lot better,” Hooper said.
She also said she had met with the Graham County Department of Social Services, N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and other agencies to address an ongoing issue with absences, and was restarting the school’s early intervention program. With the early intervention program parents of students with excessive absences will be invited to the school and offered resources to help their child stay in school.
“We’re working closely with these agencies to try to get some help and support for students who have accumulated these absences this year,” Hooper said. “It’s really at a rate that we’ve never seen.”
However, she said the school’s mid-year benchmarks looked decent.
“We are seeing a slight difference, a little bit lower than what we’ve seen in middle of the year benchmark proficiency in years past, but as a general rule, especially in our K-3 classrooms, it’s not far off.”
The board also approved some hires in closed session including Crystal Hernandez as an assistant at Robbinsville Elementary, Stacey Carpenter as bookkeeper at Robbinsville High and Wes Hooper as a custodian at Robbinsville High. Hannah Stiles, Larry Cook and Joshua Haskell were also approved as substitutes.