Page 2 - Florida Sentinel 11-24-17

Feature
Profile Of 7 Failing Schools District Ordered To Correct
MS. KIMBERLY THOMPSON Foster Elementary School
BY IRIS B. HOLTON Sentinel City Editor
Last month, the Florida Department of Education issued an ultimatum to the Hillsborough County School District. The letter, which was dated October 16th, gave the District a deadline of Friday, October 27th, (Phase 1) to provide the TOPs (Turnaround Op- tion Plan) to be imple- mented into seven (7)
WOODLAND JOHNSON Mort Elementary School
failing schools.
The seven (7) schools
are: Foster Elementary, Mort Elementary, Oak Park Elementary, Potter Ele- mentary, Sheehy Elemen- tary, and B. T. Washington Elementary Schools. Me- morial Middle School is the only secondary school on this list.
During the last grading period, Foster, Mort, Oak Park, Sheehy, and Memo- rial all received a “D.” Pot-
MS. MELANIE HILL Potter Elementary
ter and B. T. Washington received an “F.” The state’s order mandates that all of the grades for these seven schools be raised to at least a “C” grade by the end of the school year.
Here is a profile of the schools and its leadership.
Stephen Foster Elemen- tary School has an enroll- ment of 474 students. Ms. Kimberly Thompson is its principal. Ms. Thomp- son is in her 4th year as the leader of the school. Prior to this assignment, she was the principal at Potter Ele- mentary School for 3 years.
Oak Park Elementary School has an enrollment of 589 students. Ms. Mariou Bates has been the princi- pal at the school since 2013. She was the principal of Frost Elementary from 2009-2013.
Mort Elementary has the largest enrollment of all
MS. JAIME GERDING Washington Elementary School
the failing schools with 854 students. Woodland Johnson is the principal. Prior to being transferred to Mort 6 years ago, he served as principal at Palm River for 5 years.
Potter Elementary School is being led by Ms. Melanie Hill for the 2nd year. Potter has an enroll- ment of 592 students.
Sheehy Elementary School is led by Ms. Patri- cia McCants. Ms. Mc- Cants has been at the school for 7 years. It has an enrollment of 428 students.
There are 461 students at Booker T. Washington Elementary School, where Ms. Jaime Gerding is in her second year. She brought 8 years of experi- ence to the school as a prin- cipal.
Ms. April Gillyard
was assigned to the role of
MS. APRIL GILLYARD Memorial Middle School
principal at Memorial Mid- dle School in August. Prior to that, she was the princi- pal at Roland Park for 3 years. Memorial has an en- rollment of 461 students.
The School District was given 3 options to address the issues at the school. They selected the External Operator option to turn the schools around.
Option 3 states: “Con- tract with an outside entity that has a demonstrated record of effectiveness to operate the school; this may include a district-man- aged charter school in which all instructional per- sonnel are not employees of the school district, but are employees of an independ- ent governing board com- prised of members who did not participate in the re- view or approval of the charter.”
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