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If this sounds familiar, there's a good reason. It's the latest in a series of attempts to bring the school up to standards.
Test scores show why the school district continues to try something new. Whale Branch Elementary has consistently failed to meet student learning goals mandated in the South Carolina Education Accountability Act and the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Whale Branch Elementary, serving the largely undeveloped and poor northern reaches of Beaufort County, has been selected as one of five schools in the state's new Turnaround School Project. Some half a million dollars will pour in through the state Department of Education to reinvent the school for the fall of 2011.
Whale Branch Elementary is fortunate to get this added attention. The school will reorganize with the help of a four-person team from the state Education Department. The school district says changes also will include performance pay for teachers, data-driven decisions on instruction and more robust community and business partnerships.
State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex said: "The leadership in Beaufort County understands that the status quo isn't acceptable -- that a major transformation is required. Parents can expect to see a fundamentally different school when Whale Branch opens for the 2011-12 school year."
But Whale Branch Elementary already has seen significant change.
In cooperation with Beaufort-Jasper Head Start, school now begins at age 3 for students who will attend Whale Branch Elementary. The James J. Davis Elementary School in nearby Dale was converted this school year into an early-childhood education center to serve classes for ages 3 and 4 and kindergarten. And it is just beginning a preschool program that should take students as young as six weeks. Early-childhood opportunities were identified a decade ago as a top community priority by the Sheldon Township Community Support Partnership, and it might be another decade before a return is seen on these new investments.
Whale Branch Elementary has in recent years gotten new leadership, and 20 instruction days were added to the school year for its students. Also, students were given extra time for instruction in the basics. School uniforms were added this year. It has a clean and relatively new building. And it received this year a Red Carpet award for providing a family-friendly school environment and excellent customer service.
While it will be helpful to have a new team from Columbia concentrating on Whale Branch, it should not be seen as a silver bullet. Here in the Lowcountry, we saw the state take over the entire school district in Allendale County. It ran the district from 1999 to 2007 at a cost of more than $11 million. Test scores and other measures of success improved over that period, but remained low.
Whale Branch students deserve the best, and apparently they will get it as a Turnaround School. For that, we should all celebrate.
Maybe this latest reincarnation will turn a switch. Even if it doesn't, federal, state and county school leaders can never quit trying. But unless the students themselves, their parents and the neighboring community desperately want the school to improve, it won't.
