NATCHEZ — Avoiding a state takeover of two Natchez-Adams School District facilities may only require a few technical changes. Morgantown Middle School and Natchez High School will be taken over by the state next year if the schools receive another “F” rating in September 2014, when accountability ratings for the previous school year are released.

An “F” would be the third consecutive failing rating for the two schools and would allow the Mississippi Department of Education to administer the New Start School Program, which would consist of terminating all school employees and finding replacements.

But what if Natchez High School and Morgantown Middle School weren’t technically the same schools in September when the results are unveiled?

State education officials say such a change would allow the three-year clock labeling the schools as failing to reset, allowing the district to start over from scratch.

The decision on what to do with the schools is one Superintendent Frederick Hill said he is considering and includes proposals to alter the two schools’ layout, curriculum and teaching methods to avoid a state takeover and increase student performance.

Worth the wait?

The two schools in the district are among approximately 50 schools in the state that could be taken over next year, said Laura Jones, office of school improvement director with the Mississippi Department of Education.

In order to avoid a takeover, Jones said the schools need to receive higher than an “F” rating on the state accountability model, which is based on several factors including test score performance and graduation rates.

“I had a school last year jump from an ‘F’ to a ‘B,’ so it’s definitely not impossible,” Jones said. “It takes a lot of hard work, but we’ve seen it done.”

Hill said he’s not pleased with data he’s seen of other districts that were taken over by the state. The takeover option, Hill said, is one on which the district shouldn’t fall back.

“That’s the worst-case scenario because we’ve seen when the state takes over schools, they did no better than the very first time the schools were in that position,” Hill said. “If the state can do a better job let them, but they can’t.

“So I truly feel if the schools are going to improve, we have to create that change by ourselves.”

The change, Hill said, can happen in two ways: continue on the same path the schools are on now and attempt to improve on the areas in which students are struggling or restructure and reform the schools to attempt a different approach to success.

“There are options we can use to show the state we are trying to fix our high school and middle school or wait until September and have them say, ‘You tried, but it wasn’t good enough,’” Hill said. “There are ways we can reform our schools to at least give us some type of increase in our performance, and we can restructure our schools so they do not exist (like they did) in the three years they were failing.”

Outside the box

The main method Hill is considering would revamp the high school and middle school into career academies, which would function as schools within the schools offering personalized instruction to students studying similar topics.

Students would choose one of 16 career clusters, which are groupings of similar occupations and industries, such as human services, information technology or manufacturing, among others.

A student would then narrow down their eventual plan of study to one of several career pathways, which are broad groups of careers that share similar characteristics. Early childhood education, for example, would be a career pathway in the human services cluster.

From there, students would develop a “program of study” detailing which courses fit into their pathway followed by a further detailed “individual career and academic plan” that would be a guide to establishing career and academic goals for success after high school.

Those paths would eventually lead students to graduation options, which Hill said could also change under the new reformed school model.

Apart from the current graduation options the district offers, which require 21 or 24 credits, Hill said an additional early exit exam option is also available.

A student could graduate with only 17.5 high school credits if they complete all the required courses and achieve a certain grade on the ACT.

“This isn’t the most popular option, but it allows those students who show they are college ready to graduate early,” Hill said. “We need to look at how we can maximize the number of students we’re getting out of high school.”

Making the change

Hill said he was on the ground floor of developing and implementing career academies in North Carolina, where he worked before moving to the Tupelo Public School District.

Hill left the Tupelo district to become NASD superintendent in 2012.

“The high school we transformed was one of the worst performing schools at the time and it proved to be very effective,” Hill said. “You break the school up into different academies and let the students choose what they want to study.”

Hill said multiple districts across Mississippi — including Rankin County, Gulfport and Clinton — have successfully implemented career academies. The Rankin County School District, for example, received an “A” rating and has an 85-percent graduation rate.

“These are options that the state has given us to turn around our school and have been effective in other places,” Hill said. “Any of these reform models we can do at our middle school and high school.

“The comprehensive high school model we have now is at least 50 years outdated.”

Board president Wayne Barnett said change is necessary in the school district, but revamping the two schools now might not be the best solution to the problem at hand.

“We need to fix the problems we have in our school systems first and then if we want to move to schools within a school that’s fine, but I don’t think that’s the answer to the problems we face now,” Barnett said. “We can change the names of our school, we can change the setup of our school, but until we get to the basics of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic it doesn’t matter what kinds of programs we come up with because our students won’t be successful.”

Barnett said he would welcome a state takeover in September if the two schools receive another “F” rating.

“If we can’t do what needs to be done, then we need to step aside and let the state takeover,” Barnett said. “I firmly believe that we can, and I think we’ve made some changes that will get us out of the ‘F’ category.”

Setting the bar

The plans for revamping the two schools in the district will be revisited at the board’s December meeting.

Until then, Hill said it’s also important to keep up with how students are performing in classrooms and set reachable goals to pull the district out of the failing category.

A multifaceted document detailing goals in order to escape the category of a failing school district will soon be finalized, Hill said.The document lists a variety of categories, such as reading proficiency and science proficiency, followed by the corresponding score students in the district received last school year on the statewide tests. It also lists the percentage amount needed for each category to reach a certain goal.

Students, for example, scored a 34 in reading proficiency last school year and must increase that score by 47 percent to reach a goal of 50.

If all of the goals on the document are reached during this year’s state tests, Hill said the school district would receive a “C” rating and avoid a state takeover.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Hill said. “But now we have reliable data to help us see where we are and what we need to work on to get to where we want to be.”