It&8217;s easy to buy into children.

No one in their right mind would ever dream of pulling against the success of a child. And most everyone recognizes that our children and our schools are our future.

A year and a few months ago the state of Louisiana said some nasty words about three Ferriday schools. Based on the state&8217;s monitoring system the lower, upper and junior high were &8220;academically unacceptable.&8221;

What a harsh title. What a crushing blow to teachers and administrators who felt like they were doing all they could. It was a hard pill to swallow.

But like all medicine, the pill wouldn&8217;t work unless it went down.

The students in Ferriday&8217;s schools are not from wealthy families, everyone knows that. They don&8217;t have all the latest teaching toys at home, and their families don&8217;t take them on educational vacations to museums.

Mom and dad &8212; if he&8217;s even around &8212; are either trying hard to make ends meet, or find trying too hard altogether.

Most aren&8217;t involved in their children&8217;s educations. They don&8217;t check homework. They don&8217;t volunteer to be room mother.

Yet, Ferriday&8217;s children deserve the same education everyone else gets, and their schools are held to the same standards.

For a year those three schools have fought the nasty title. They had to offer school choice &8212; giving their students a chance to choose a school in another town. (Only a handful left Ferriday.)

They were the subject of great debate at school board meetings, community meetings and among those connected to education.

New district policies were made because of the schools. Principals were changed. New teachers were hired.

Those were all necessary steps to ensure growth for the future.

And Monday made it all better. For two of the schools anyway.

State rankings were released, and Ferriday Lower and Upper showed the needed growth. They are no longer &8220;academically unacceptable.&8221; Ferriday Upper took great leaps &8212; showing exemplary academic growth.

FLES Principal Loretta Blankenstein couldn&8217;t take my first phone call to talk about the news. She had something far more important to attend to. She had pulled a small group of children from their classes, brought them to their office and coached them on their celebratory role.

When Blankenstein got on the intercom to share the good news with the whole school, the students were her cheering background noise.

There&8217;s no way the kindergarten through second-graders even remotely understood what a School Performance Score is, what a state ranking is or why there was such a need to celebrate.

But they did know they had done something good. They surely felt pride for their school and love for their grinning principal.

Not all Ferriday teachers are good. But that can be said for any school in America.

Not all Ferriday teachers are bad either. In fact some are very, very good.

Lower and upper teachers showed their stuff this year. They beat the odds. They didn&8217;t let Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, a new state-mandated curriculum or a new test stop them.

The junior high is a step or two behind. Though they did improve this year, it wasn&8217;t enough to please the state test czars. They still have the nasty label.

But it&8217;s not long before the students from the lower and the upper become the students at the junior high. The foundation is being laid, and the future can get brighter.

But everyone has to buy into the children. There&8217;s still work to be done and there&8217;s no time to waste. The administrators in place at Ferriday&8217;s schools need community support.

Take a second to give them a well deserved pat on the back, then continue to push for excellence. It&8217;s our only hope for the future.

Julie Finley

is the managing editor of The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3551 or

julie.finley@natchezdemocrat.com

.