Lady’s Island Middle principal accused of singling out black students to leave district
Less than two months after coming under fire for a presentation that parents say singled out black students, Lady’s Island Middle School principal Gregory Hall will leave the Beaufort County School District Friday to become a deputy superintendent for instruction at Florence 1 Schools.
The district announced Thursday that N’Kia Campbell, currently the district’s Officer of Academic Initiatives, will replace Hall as the interim principal at Lady’s Island Middle.
According to a district press release, Hall began applying for the new job in December and notified staff and parents that he was selected for the job last month.
The deputy superintendent for instruction makes between $130,000 and $135,000, according to the Florence 1 job listing, which also listed the position’s start date as July 1. As of January 2018, Hall’s salary was $90,932.
‘He told us we’re dumb’
Hall, who has been the principal at Lady’s Island since 2016 and worked at the district since 2011, faced backlash in January for a presentation that parents said singled out black students for low test scores, chronic absenteeism and behavioral issues in a talk about state testing results.
A Facebook post by parent Lakiesha Warren-Chisolm about the presentation got 200 comments.
“This is how my kids took it: that he told us we’re dumb, and we can’t read,” she said in February.
Hall’s presentation was given to each grade level and included slides that highlighted the racial demographic with the lowest scores, which in all categories was black students. In one case, Hall also highlighted Hispanic students, who represented the second-lowest scores in one category.
In February, Hall said he intended to “challenge” students by showing them the school’s SC READY and MAP test results, which fell below district averages.
“What I intended to be motivating and challenging was upsetting, and that crushed me,” Hall said.
Hall also held two parent meetings to address the presentation.
“He apologized to parents, and said that in the future he should present this data to parents,” Beaufort County School District spokesman Jim Foster said in February.
Former student to become principal
Campbell, Hall’s replacement, has worked in Beaufort County School District for all of her 22-year education career and is an alumna of Lady’s Island Middle, according to the district release.
As the district’s academic initiatives officer for the last two years, she supervised the district’s alternative education, professional development and school choice programs as well as serving as a hearing officer for student discipline cases.
Her tenure in the role included the closure of Islands Academy.
District spokesman Foster said Thursday that Campbell’s responsibilities will be distributed among the rest of the district’s instructional services department staff.
She previously served as a teacher at Shell Point Elementary School, an assistant principal at Robert Smalls Middle and H.E. McCracken Middle schools and a principal at Joseph S. Shanklin Elementary School.
“It was while I was a student athlete here at Lady’s Island Middle School that I began to understand the importance of teamwork and to start building my own leadership skills,” Campbell said in the Thursday release. “I promise our parents that our team is going to work very hard to help each and every one of our students to succeed.”
This story was originally published March 19, 2020 at 1:11 PM.