Charles Edwards
Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. is in the early stages of creating plans intended to boost high school graduation rates.
The school corporation is working toward creating team structures at both Columbus North and Columbus East high schools, BCSC Director of Title Services Charles Edwards told school board members Monday.
The general idea behind this concept is that students benefit from small schools, Edwards said. Using the team structure has been proven to allow students in larger high schools feel like they are on a smaller campus, he said.
To illustrate his point, Edwards pointed out that CSA New Tech High School, which has a smaller student population than either Columbus North or Columbus East, consistently outpaces the state by averaging a graduation rate of 90%.
North hit a high mark of a 91.1% graduation rate in 2014, while Columbus East reached their high of 90.6% in 2018. However, Edwards says both schools have experienced a decline in graduation rates since then.
BCSC is considering a model that has been used by Brownsburg High School for over a dozen years that utilizes what are called student success teams. Each team would consist of an assistant principal, a guidance counselor, an academic coach and an administrative assistant, Edwards said.
As the class moves up a grade, the same student success team stays with them in order to increase the focus on a particular set of students, Edwards said. If a group of students gets too large, he said an additional counselor would be added.
Each team member would essentially have the same three goals: Get to know each student they are responsible for, become well-acquainted with their parents and work with other team members toward getting each student to graduate, Edwards said.
“Implementing a team structure will help in all three of these things by increasing accountability, reducing the ratio of students to adults and increasing the ownership of the team,” Edwards said. “That increases the likelihood of success.”
If adopted, there would be weekly team meetings to discuss students in regard to absences, tardiness, discipline, grades and other academic matters, he said. During these meetings, the team would create a plan to figure out who is going to be responsible for addressing what is brought up during the meeting.
“These conversations will be about students,” Edwards told the school board. “Not numbers, statistics, or percentages. Having seen the power of team (structures), the goal of BCSC would be to give all students the experience of a small school, and increase our graduation rates.”
Although the subject was titled Secondary Level Reconfiguration on Monday’s agenda, the term reconfiguration refers to each student’s experience at school, Edwards said.
“It doesn’t mean moving teachers around between North and East, and it doesn’t mean balancing kids out at each school,” he said.
When a 10-member delegation from BCSC went to Brownsburg High School on Feb. 28, Edwards said they asked staff and students at the Hendricks County facility why they went to a teaming structure. The most frequent answers received were to make Brownsburg’s growing, 2,000-plus high school community feel small again and to do a better job of getting kids to graduate, he said.
“They did both,” said Edwards, who will become Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education in July. “(Brownsburg) is consistently well above 90% in graduation rates, making them competitive with some of the best schools in the state.”
At this time, BCSC is planning to adopt essentially the same structure used at Brownsburg, although Edwards says there will likely be occasional adjustments to make the structure work in Bartholomew County.
School board member Jason Major said another indication of Brownburg’s success is that the school’s average SAT scores are just under 1200.
But Major said there are still unanswered questions.
“How do we use this (team structure)?” Major asked. “How do we get there? What’s the cost difference between where we are at today and where we need to get to? Do we need to hire additional teachers and administrators?”
Major also asked for an administrator’s perspective on how to attract the right people to be academic coaches.
In response, Edwards said there will be a meeting this week of high school principals, administrators and a representative of the Columbus Educators Association. The meeting will be to review questions and attempt to come up with answers regarding the use of student success teams, he said.
School board members were told more details will be available during a strategic planning meeting scheduled for March 24.
If approved, BCSC would like the team structure in place for the 2023-2024 school year, school board President Nikki Wheeldon said.
