Kathleen Young Parker
BY ALLY ANALORE & SHANI TRACEY, Neighborhood News Bureau
ST. PETERSBURG — In 2014, five south St. Pete elementary schools were labeled failures by the Tampa Bay Times: Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo and Melrose. To help these schools improve, Pinellas County Schools collaborated with the Juvenile Welfare Board and staff from all five schools. The outcome was the Transformation Zone, a model of support that has been implemented to provide low-performing schools an opportunity to turn around and close the achievement gap within students.
This model encourages educators to work collaboratively to promote stronger schools. They are working to improve student achievement and culture by creating systems that are supportive to both scholars and families.
The foundation of the Transformation Zone is produced on school turnaround research and evidence-based practices. Pinellas County Schools use this evidence to create innovative approaches for school turnaround and to enhance learning for students.
In the past three years, Fairmount Park Elementary has teetered between D and F grades with 2018 landing on a D. Melrose and Maximo have seen an improvement in culture and their overall school grade, both receiving C grades last school year. However, Campbell Park and Lakewood continue to have failing grades.
As the new school year approaches, The Weekly Challenger reached out to the principals of the five schools in the Transformation Zone. Kristy Moody, principal at Fairmount Park and Kathleen Young Parker, Campbell Park’s principal, took time out to review their strategies for this coming year.
Campbell Park Elementary
TWC: What other schools have you been a principal at?
Young Parker: I was the principal at Lakewood in 2003, and I was there for five years. I was at Highland Lakes for two. This year will be the start of my 15th year.
TWC: Have all the schools been the same?
Young Parker: No, Lakewood was very similar to this school, and the others were very affluent schools.
TWC: Between Lakewood and Campbell Park, have you seen many similarities? Is that experience what made you come to Campbell Park?
Young Parker: I’m actually from St. Pete. I took swimming lessons right here in Campbell Park. I grew up on 16th Street South, so I was very familiar with the community and with the neighborhood. A lot of the parents who are bringing their children are people I went to high school with.
TWC: What are some of the biggest disadvantages or challenges that the students here face that other students in other places don’t?
Young Parker: We have quite a few students that come with trauma. It could be the death of a parent or having a parent that is incarcerated. A lot of different issues where sometimes they might not act the most appropriate because they are not really equipped to deal with it. You and I can verbalize when we’re upset, but a lot of times when they’re experiencing trauma, they may not react in the most appropriate way. So, that could be a disadvantage for some of the students.
A lot of our scholars–we like to call them scholars because they need to know the importance- that they can learn–they are smart. A lot of our parents are working parents, and it makes it really hard for them to be really involved. We’re trying to come up with ways that they can be engaged without physically having to be on campus. That’s one of the goals this year.
Engagement doesn’t have to look like coming to a PTA meeting or coming to a staff meeting. We want the engagement to be where it’s an extension of the school.
TWC: Are there any specific programs that you have to encourage those things you mentioned? Making them feel loved and excited about school?
Young Parker: Well, there’s not a program, but one of the things we’re really working on is Positive Behavior System called PBIS. With that, we celebrate the good things that they’re doing. From celebrating if a student does well on a test or a bi-weekly assessment or a math test, we want to celebrate that.
A lot of times, we point out all the things students are doing wrong, but we never celebrate the things that they’re doing right. We want to celebrate good behavior, celebrate academics. Our goal is to have some type of celebration once a month. Having guest come in and different things. We have a committee.
TWC: Who is in charge of that committee?
Young Parker: One of our teachers, her name is Kimberley Latimore, and she’s actually our behavior coach. Her and Kimberley Noorbakhsh.
TWC: How do you feel about the grade the school received recently?
Young Parker: Of course, we were disappointed. At the same time, we are excited about next year. I told my teachers yes, we didn’t do as well as we expected, but at the same time, no crying over spilled milk. What are we going to do differently?
We’ve actually worked together a lot this summer putting different things in place so that when our students return, we can hit the ground running. A lot of our intermediate teachers are all new to Campbell Park coming into this school year. Not new to teaching, but new to Campbell Park.
We did a lot of recruiting from out of state this year. So, a lot of our teachers that are coming in are not homegrown. They are from out of the area, and a lot of them have experience with this demographic.
TWC: Going into this next year, what are the things you all are trying to improve on?
Young Parker: We’ll do something called By The Numbers. We actually know every student and where they are on day one, and we are already developing plans for each individual student. So, when children come in, we already know they’re on a level one, but they need support with comprehension.
We’re already building plans for those students, so we are not going to lose time trying to figure out what [a child] is struggling in. We already know that. So, having that information, we try to match the children with the teacher’s strengths.
We have spent a lot just kind of looking at the data and figuring out the next steps because not every kid needs the same thing. Some of them are level two; some are level three. We have a lot of students who are level one, but the level ones are so vastly different.
TWC: How do you figure out where the students are? What are the metrics?
Young Parker: Multiple Assessments. We use FSA, which is what we do the school grading on. We also use something called MAP, which is our district assessment. We take that several times throughout the year, and we also pulled their guided reading and learning record data.
We use something called data mining where you look at all different pieces of data and the data, a lot of times, show you the same thing. Once you put it all across, you’re seeing it’s very clear that the student is really struggling in this area. Each assessment really tells you the same thing.
TWC: Was it intentional to recruit teachers that aren’t from St. Pete?
Young Parker: No, it wasn’t intentional. We can only interview the people who want to be here. There are a lot of people locally. I feel like these schools kind of have a stigma where they feel ‘I don’t want to transfer south,’ or ‘I don’t want to go here.’
We have a lot of people that are moving to the area that love turn around work. I don’t know if you’ve heard of common ground schools. They’re big up north or Teach For America? Several of the teachers that we hired have done that type of work where they have worked in predominantly African-American, poverty, F and have seen tremendous growth, and their schools have really excelled.
I think three of those teachers have worked for Teach for America and worked with that type of turn around. Those were the kind of teachers that sort of rose to the top because when they came in for their interview, you could tell they had passion. At the same time, they knew their standards. They knew their curriculum.
We’d give scenarios about how they would handle certain situations, and most of them just nailed it. When we started talking to the principals, they all said great things about them. We’re excited about the possibilities of what next year can hold.
TWC: What type of improvement do you see in these upcoming years?
Young Parker: My goal for the school is C or better. That is my goal, and I don’t want to just look at learning gains. Learning gains are wonderful, but I want our students’ proficiency level to move up. Campbell Park was a C last year because of learning gains; I believe the year before that, just so you have a point of reference.
The year before last year, I don’t have the numbers directly in front of me but let’s say they were at nine percent, at three and above. Then the following year, we moved to 22 percent at three and above, but you still have 78 percent of them that are not on grade level. They met it because of learning gains and not really because of proficiency.
Where the school that I came from, 82 to 87 percent of their children was on grade level, and so that is a HUGE gap. We want our students to not just move from a one to a two, but we really want, in the end, to get them at proficiency level so that they can be competitive, and that they can go to the best schools.
Fairmount Park Elementary
TWC: How does Fairmount Park ensure that students are prepared for success?
Kristy Moody: Academically, we need to provide a curriculum that is really interesting. When you achieve success, you get hungry for more success. So, giving a core curriculum that is interesting teaches children topics and opportunities for meaningful reading, writing and problem-solving.
We use data to figure out where children have gaps or where they have accelerated to take them to the next level. We have a lot of student services. Our social workers do an amazing job at helping families get housing or connecting with services. We have a family navigator here to support our families. There are a lot of things she can assist with.
We also have a mental health counselor. We have a school counselor. That whole team supports children and families. We try to be proactive in helping our families know that there is a lot to offer and a lot of resources that we can connect them with.
Kristy Moody
