JES example for Iberia schools

The party is over for Jeanerette Elementary School administrators and students after the school received the state’s second highest increase in its performance grade, nearly doubling its score.

Principal Devon Willis-Jones said the hard work has just begun.

Jeanerette’s recent success in its performance scores highlights the increased need for positive teacher-student relationships, Jones said.

The relationship between teachers and students seems to be working as Jeanerette went from a failing grade of 45.6 points in 2013 to 85.7 points in 2014, which included bonus points for improved year to year performance.

“Our teachers work closely with knowing a child’s story and so I know a lot of the kids have a rough home life,” Jones said. “Some of the student’s parents are on drugs or alcohol and we know that because we know their home lives are unstable so we try to provide anything the child needs.

“Most of our parents are working parents and some of the parents work night jobs and work in casinos. We try to impact students from when they walk in the building.”

Jones, who has been at Jeanerette for two years as principal, said her philosophy is to put more emphasis on her students’ work in the classroom and not necessarily have the focus on homework.

Jones also had a strict weekly schedule with teachers to evaluate student performance.

“We taught our teachers how to teach the curriculum. Each week we spent working on professional development for 90 minutes a week and taught them how to teach. We would track the students and every week come back and re-evaluate,” Jones said. “We would all sit down and at a table and evaluate ‘Bobby.’ If Bobby hadn’t improved we would have to figure out what’s stopping him from learning and we come back each week to see if he’s made progress.”

With the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, assignment to be administered next year, Iberia Parish Superintendent of Schools Dale Henderson said there’s always the possibility of trying to emulate a school’s system to improve scores.

“Well of course in 2015 we will have the PARCC testing, which will be a much tougher test. We will be looking at the assessment guides and work with our teachers and principals to tailor the instruction,” Henderson said. “You certainly want to share success stories so those schools that have really performed well we ask them ‘What are you doing?’ ”

Henderson said Jeanerette Elementary has done well to “formulate the right game plan” and teachers apparently took it seriously.

One of Iberia Parish public schools in need of such a plan is Johnston-Hopkins Elementary School. With its new facilitiy in New Iberia, it scored lowest of the parish’s public schools at 53.3, a significant drop from last year’s score of 67.7. Several calls to the school’s front office were made over the past three weeks in an attempt to get comments from Principal Mona Atchison. None of the calls, however, was returned.

Teachers and administrators at all public schools in the parish will have their work cut out for them in the spring. Jeanerette Elementary improved from a failing grade to a strong C, but it also received a 10-point bonus, which pushed its score to a B.

Jones said she expects the school to earn a “strong C” with the new PARCC assessment.

“I think the message is if you formulate a good plan for instructional delivery and make connections in the home you should have success,” Henderson said.