CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Four schools on Charleston’s West Side, all part of the five-year West Side Community Development School Pilot Project, have new goals for the new school year.
Those goals include increasing attendance, reducing tardies and improving subject proficiencies while building on parent involvement and afterschool programs in a part of the Capital City that has long been riddled with poverty and crime, where schools often serve as “sanctuaries” for health and safety.
Yvonne Lee, a family support worker for Kanawha County Schools at Edgewood Elementary School and Stonewall Jackson Middle School, said the ultimate purpose of the project is to change the culture when it comes to education.
“We have to get these parents to have more gumption about education. A lot of the parents on the West Side are underachievers, non-educated and so they don’t even believe in education. We have to start making them believe,” she said.
“It’s the atmosphere. It’s the climate and, right now, we’re changing that climate.”
On Thursday, Lee was one of the speakers during a meeting at the offices of the Kanawha County Board of Education on the multi-year pilot project, first launched in 2013, that included representatives from Edgewood Elementary School, Grandview Elementary School, Mary C. Snow West Side Elementary School and Stonewall Jackson Middle School.
Each school is being monitored monthly with an academic year scorecard setting targets in problem areas, including attendance. Students who do show up for school are often late.
“We are struggling with that,” admitted Jessica Austin, principal of Stonewall Jackson Middle School where students from all of the West Side’s communities come together. At the start of the 2015-2016 school year, she said she’s optimistic.
“I have a great staff. I love our kids. This is my 9th year at Stonewall Jackson Middle School and I have the heart of the West Side beating inside,” she said.
The West Side Community Development School Pilot Project was created to bring together school officials in Kanawha County with those from higher education, community organizations, the Center for Professional Development and many others.
The purpose is to improve the academic performance of students attending schools on Charleston’s West Side by developing and implementing strategies that could then be replicated in other communities.
With the project, certain state polices are allowed to be waived.
Lee, a former worker with Child Protective Services, said the West Side is a complicated place full of “have nots” facing multitudes of challenges, but she said she cannot allow herself to get discouraged as she works with students and their families.
“Being discouraged is not even in my vocabulary, because I came out of Los Angeles, I came because somebody believed in me,” she said. “I ain’t nothing but a sinner saved by grace, so somebody saved me. I’ve got to save others.”