Rock Hill schools leader proposes change in choice programs

Creating a foreign language immersion academy at Sullivan Middle School or building a new language immersion elementary school are some of the changes Superintendent Kelly Pew is considering for Rock Hill’s school choice programs.

Pew shared her ideas, developed while working with a school choice committee for several months last fall, and answered questions for several hundred parents, teachers and others Thursday night at Sullivan Middle School. She shared her proposals with members of the choice committee Tuesday.

“We need to make sure every child in Rock Hill School District Three has an equal opportunity to attend a choice program,” she said during the meeting.

Some changes Pew suggested would involve moving students and programs to different schools, which she said might attract opposition. Some changes would begin in the fall of 2016, while others would take a few years to implement.

She proposed consolidating the language immersion program offered at Ebinport, Richmond Drive and Rosewood elementary schools in a kindergarten to fifth-grade language academy on the Sullivan campus. A new building would be built for that program, probably to open in 2018, she said.

“It would no longer be at three different locations, it would be at one location,” she said about the language immersion program.

A second option for that consolidation, she said, would be building a new elementary school, part of the district’s long-range plan for enrollment growth, dedicated to language immersion. The district does not have property for the school, and the earliest it could open would be fall 2018, she said.

Under either option for the language immersion program, students would move on to Sullivan for language study in grades six to eight where there would be “a curriculum that is appropriate to them,” she said.

Pew said a review of the district’s school choice programs, which are offered at seven elementary and two middle schools, has been overdue. Choice programs are special academic programs in areas that include language, arts, and math and science, with an application and admissions process.

She said problems have included limited access to some of the programs due to overenrollment at some schools and a lack of program continuity through middle and high school.

School bus transportation, which is not provided to children who attend a choice school outside their zoned school, has been another issue.

However, Pew said she believes the district can commit to providing transportation to students who attend school choice programs outside their enrollment zone. The school district would have to pay the cost, she said.

Transportation is a key to make the programs accessible to more students, she said.

Pew is expected to present her ideas to the school board Tuesday. Further board discussions are expected in February, with a potential Feb. 22 school board vote on the proposed changes.

Some of Pew’s other recommendations:

▪  Increase the percentage of gifted and talented students from each school and grade level who could attend the Accelerated Studies, or gifted and talented program, at Sunset Park Elementary.

Enrollment has been limited to 5 percent of gifted students in each grade level from each elementary school, she said, or about 30 of the 600 Rock Hill elementary students who qualify. But Pew said the district could increase that percentage to as much as 10 percent, or up to 60 students.

Pew said she wants the district to study the feasibility of a middle school gifted and talented program for students who finish the program at Sunset Park.

▪  Pew said there are two possibilities for the Montessori program, based at Sylvia Circle Elementary, and both involve moving students elsewhere.

The Montessori program would need to move because Pew said she wants to move Head Start students from the Edgewood Center to Sylvia Circle. The district partners with the Head Start preschool program for disadvantaged children by providing space for $1 a year, she said.

She said the district needs to spend $1 million to improve the Edgewood Center to continue the federally funded program there. Instead of making those improvements, she said, it plans to move Head Start and sell the center.

She recommended moving the Montessori program for 3-year-old to second-grade students to either Ebenezer Avenue Elementary, where a school addition would be needed, or the Central Child Development Center on East Black Street.

Older Montessori children, in grades three to five, would enter an “inquiry-based instruction” program at Ebenezer Avenue, which would become a feeder school for children in the Montessori program, she said.

Pew said she wants to change the Montessori program for older children because she said it is not very different from the regular curriculum.

The inquiry program “embraces a lot of the things Montessori stands for, that is child centered, child paced, the children have choice,” said Rich Melzer, director of school choice programs. Teachers also stay with their classes for more than one school year, he said.

Melzer said a Columbia-area school where several Rock Hill district employees have worked has such a program and district leaders plan a visit.

If Montessori moves to Ebenezer Avenue, Pew said, about 120 students zoned for Sylvia Circle would move to Ebenezer Avenue or Belleview elementary schools.

If the Montessori program is moved to the CDCC, she said, students in the 4-year-old child development program there would have to move back to their home schools, where they would attend 5-year-old kindergarten.

▪  Continue the arts integration program at Northside Elementary, but study the need for a performing arts program at York Road Elementary and Rawlinson Road Middle schools, which both have available classroom space.

▪  Pew recommended no change to the International Baccalaureate program offered at Rosewood Elementary, Sullivan Middle and at all three high schools.

▪ The math, science and technology program at Oakdale Elementary and the math, science, technology and arts program at Saluda Trail Middle would be unchanged. Pew said a team would be created to develop course offerings at South Pointe High School for students moving up from those programs.

This story was originally published January 7, 2016 at 9:16 PM with the headline "Rock Hill schools leader proposes change in choice programs."