The Savannah chapter of the NAACP hosted an education forum Sunday afternoon where Chatham County school superintendent Denise Watts detailed the district’s priorities for the upcoming school year and answered questions from community members.
Dozens of community members as well as other local leaders in education showed up to the forum at Tremont Temple Baptist Church and raised concerns about student attendance, parent involvement, discipline, and literacy ahead of the first day of school next week.
This year brings improvements to the 10th largest school system in the state: Watts, who is serving her second year as superintendent, reported that all 36,000 students will now have free breakfast and lunch, school personnel have received raises, teachers were given $500 stipends to purchase school supplies, and more vacancies for school staff and bus drivers have been filled. However, there are still long-term issues affecting the district that Watts plans on addressing this year.
Focus on attendance
Superintendent Watts said the school system’s main area of focus will be on chronic absenteeism. Last year, an average of 40 percent of high school students missed more than 10 percent of the school year according to the district. That number spikes amongst economically disadvantaged, Black, and Hispanic students. Chronic absenteeism has been on the rise across the nation since the COVID pandemic, but Watts said it’s been particularly difficult for the district to recover.
“We never bounced back post-Covid, but here in Savannah-Chatham County Public School System, we seem to be bouncing back slower than other places in the country and other places in the state, so we have found this to be a critical area of focus,” she said.
She encouraged parents to stay updated on their students’ missed days through the PowerSchool app or website and said the county is working on implementing new initiatives that encourage students to attend classes.
Changing approach to discipline
Another major concern that several residents brought up at the meeting was student discipline. Watts said the county is preparing new strategies that seek to be proactive in understanding what is happening with students before an incident occurs. She said the school system has increased the number of assistant principals in schools and begun to train school leadership on how to improve discipline procedures and prevent conflict from escalating.
“Kids don’t just fight. There’s often a conversation that leads up to it. Parents know about it, people in the community know about it, and when we’re told this information, we can often intervene,” she said. “So we are really working on ensuring our schools and our teachers and our school leaders are on the same page as it relates to some of those places where common incidents take place.”
She added that discipline and attendance are often connected issues that signal a need for increased support for students that are more likely to miss class or receive suspension. She called on parents to become more involved with their students at home to ensure that they are prepared to do well at school each day.
“We just want parents that are invested in their kids at home. Read to your child, be interested in what your child is doing. When your kid comes home late at night, you ask questions about what’s going on. When you know something is brewing in the community, pick up the phone and call,” she said. “That’s really the parent engagement that we want. We can take care of the education piece, we all got trained on how to do that.”
Creating a positive learning community
Overall, Watts emphasized that the district is aiming at improving the “culture and climate” of schools by encouraging more positive relationships between students, teachers, and parents. She said that recent surveys show teachers in Chatham County are dissatisfied with the environment of schools, mostly due to negative interactions with students and teachers.
“The big programs matter, but the day-to-day interactions, I can’t communicate that story only enough, with adults and kids, that matters. How we speak and treat one another matters,” she said.
Watts said that external community support and engagement is always necessary to keep students invested in their education and pointed to groups like the Family and Community Engagement Advisory Group that serve as liaisons to the district. She added that beyond back-to-school drives and donating school supplies, the biggest impact volunteers can make is by receiving modified literacy training provided by the district that teaches volunteers how to read better with students.
“When kids come to school and they have confidence in their ability to read well, write well, and speak well, they come with a sense of pride and the ability to engage in a way. It doesn’t necessarily deal with all discipline problems, but it deals with a significant amount of discipline problems when kids are proficient in reading and math.”
Near-miss with federal fund freeze
SCCPSS, home to 38 Title I schools (schools that receive federal funding to support students from low-income families), received good news concerning around $4 million of education grants last week when the Trump administration announced they would be releasing previously withheld funding for school programs nationwide. Watts said the district heard about the freeze the day before the grants were supposed to be disseminated and had “a bit of chaos” as they tried to figure out how to finance programs like afterschool services, teacher professional developments, and support for students who speak English as a second language.
“I want you to imagine if on the day before your paycheck is supposed to show up in your bank account, you got all your bills planned out, you know your mortgage is coming out of that, your car payment is coming out of that, and you find out on the night before you’re not getting that money,” she said, adding that the district was given ‘no explanation’ when the funds were frozen or restored.
The first day of school for students will be on Monday, Aug. 4. Parents can click here to learn how create a Parent Access account for PowerSchool, which provides real-time updates on students’ grades, attendance, and assignments.