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Editorial: Community must rally to close Pinellas achievement gap

 
DIRK SHADD   |   Times  Maria Scruggs, President of the St. Petersburg Branch of the NAACP, during a meeting at the Enoch D. Davis center in St. Petersburg Tuesday evening (12/18/19).  The NAACP of St. Petersburg has publicly declared it a major civil rights issue that large number of Pinellas County's black students aren't proficient in reading. President Maria Scruggs said the county's black community has "accepted full responsibility for this atrocity" and have been working since the spring to build a coalition of people to develop a reading campaign. Scruggs made a presentation on the group's plans and goal to ensure black students in pre-k through 12th grade are reading proficiently by 2021.
DIRK SHADD | Times Maria Scruggs, President of the St. Petersburg Branch of the NAACP, during a meeting at the Enoch D. Davis center in St. Petersburg Tuesday evening (12/18/19). The NAACP of St. Petersburg has publicly declared it a major civil rights issue that large number of Pinellas County's black students aren't proficient in reading. President Maria Scruggs said the county's black community has "accepted full responsibility for this atrocity" and have been working since the spring to build a coalition of people to develop a reading campaign. Scruggs made a presentation on the group's plans and goal to ensure black students in pre-k through 12th grade are reading proficiently by 2021.
Published Dec. 27, 2018

Narrowing the achievement gap between white and black students in Pinellas County will take a holistic effort by schools, parents and the wider community. Years of effort primarily by the school district have kept this issue in the forefront — but the gap remains incredibly wide and demands a broader approach. The St. Petersburg NAACP president's recent acknowledgement that schools alone can't fix the problem is a commendable recognition of that reality, and it should spark a new commitment to collaborating to help every child succeed.

In Pinellas schools, the gap between black students and other groups is more like a canyon. Recent school district statistics show only one-quarter of black students read at grade level, compared to 57 percent of non-black students. Less than two-thirds of black students earn a high school diploma, while more than eight in 10 non-black students graduate. The primary contributing factor is poverty and all of its attendant challenges. Poor kids typically enter school already behind their better-off peers. Unstable housing and family situations follow them into the classroom and disrupt their learning. In Pinellas' longest-struggling schools, virtually all of the students are poor.

Against that sobering backdrop, it is not realistic to expect school district leaders and classroom teachers to be able to wave a wand, overcome all of those obstacles and turn out high-achieving students with little help outside the school system. To be sure, the district failed too many kids for far too long. The Tampa Bay Times' 2015 series "Failure Factories" detailed how Pinellas officials abandoned integration efforts at predominantly black elementary schools in south St. Petersburg and failed to provide promised resources as academic performance and student behavior deteriorated.

But as the district faltered, no unified community effort filled the void. And while the district has enhanced its approach and made the issue a higher priority in recent years, the achievement gap persists. Now Maria Scruggs, the local NAACP president, has effectively issued a new rallying cry: "The (school) district has shown they just can't do it. They have done what they can do, but now it's time for the community to step in." What happens next will be pivotal.

Scruggs envisions using testing data to develop a personalized education plan for every struggling student and outlining the role that teachers, parents, churches, coaches and others play in it. "It's about changing the culture so that we are actively engaged in making sure our children are well," she said. The district, which is continuing to pursue its 10-year "Bridging the Gap" plan, supports Scruggs' idea. So do leaders such as U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, D-St. Petersburg, and the Concerned Organization for the Quality Education of Black Students, which has long fought for racial equality in Pinellas schools. It will take widespread community support, as well as ongoing resources for students and their families, to make a great impact in reducing the achievement gap.

The school district cannot be expected to be successful by itself. Recognizing that reality is the first step. The next step is enlisting the broader community as Scruggs envisions to help every child learn to read and get on track to graduate from high school -- regardless of skin color.