For Greenwood public schools, change can be good, unless too much of it stands in the way of progress.
Superintendent Montrell Greene declined $50,000 in planning funds to facilitate the national “Excellence for All” initiative, a grant awarded to the district last year.
The program aims to give students more than one path to graduation, and in some cases it allows them to begin college-level courses while in high school.
Greenwood was one of five Mississippi districts to get the green light on implementing the curriculum and the funds needed to do so. But Greene said the program would have been rushed in the wake of so much transition in the district and would have brought about too much change during a time of uncertainty.
The program was scheduled to begin in the fall and would have required the implementation of a new academic curriculum.
Greene said the $50,000 would cover program costs only up to a point, leaving the district to pick up the rest. He also said he was made aware of the grant when the district was in the midst of a host of new changes, including a new superintendent and the resignation of the director of curriculum.
The curriculum work was supposed to be taken up by Dr. Jennifer Wilson, former interim superintendent and curriculum director. Wilson resigned from the curriculum position after being passed over for the permanent superintendent job in April.
Wilson could not be reached for comment this morning.
Wilson secured the Excellence for All grant while serving as interim superintendent. She was chosen for that job after the resignation of Dr. Margie Pulley last August, and last fall, she pulled together a team of teachers and administrators to apply for the grant.
But, said Greene, Excellence for All would have affected all incoming ninth-graders, requiring a curriculum overhaul that would have had to have been completed in one short summer, right after Wilson’s resignation.
Greene also said he’s wary of Excellence for All because it’s still in its pilot phase.
“It’s just not the best time for us to move forward with a major adjustment in our curriculum without giving a closer look at it,” he said.
Besides, he said, the district has not gotten the “parental buy-in” it needs for such a change.
“Looking at the grant as it was, with the expectation that we would start in the fall, I saw that three things were not put in place yet: the budget, a curriculum and parental input,” Greene said. “Without having known that those things were in place, we needed to do more studying.”
Greene said he did his homework. He talked with a neighboring school district that’s already implemented the program — he declined to reveal which district — and discussed the curriculum changes with a representative from the state school board.
“We’ve been pretty thorough on this,” he added. “The district we talked to stated that it’s a very challenging curriculum, and they’ve been working on it for more than one year. It’s promising, but it takes a while to work out some of the kinks and challenges.”
Greene said he rejected the grant based on what he felt was the best chance of maximizing student potential in the district.
“We’re not going to embark on major changes initially,” he said.”We’re going to make assessments and take it one step at a time.”
• Contact Jeanie Riess at 581-7235 or jriess@gwcommonwealth.com.
