St. Croix Superintendent Carlos McGregor and his team are seen with Principal Ovett Wilson, center, of Dr. Carter G. Woodson PK-8 Leadership Academy in Tampa, Fla.
Through professional connections with Tampa-based Florida in the Islands Comprehensive Center (FLICC), St. Croix District Superintendent Carlos McGregor along with a team of K-8 administrators and district representatives recently visited two schools in Tampa’s Hillsborough County Public Schools system that are in different stages of K-8 implementation in order to gain inspiration for their own campuses.
Those schools included Dr. Carter G. Woodson PK-8 Leadership Academy, now in its second year as a K-8 school and Rampello K-8 Magnet School, in existence for 12 years.
“The purpose of this school tour was to provide the [St. Croix] school leaders with insight into best practices for implementation, the opportunity to speak one-on-one with administrators and staff of a school with a K-8 format, and to review, first-hand, the resources and programs implemented by those K-8 schools,” said E. Xiomara Herman,” director of Curriculum and Instruction in the St. Croix District. In the 2019-2020 school year, four St. Croix schools were reconfigured to K-8 models—Arthur A. Richards K-8, Eulalie Rivera K-8, Juanita Gardine K-8 and Pearl B. Larsen PreK-8.
Herman said the group participated in “action-planning sessions to determine ways to improve strategic planning at the school level in a K-8 environment” as well as visited classrooms, engaged in small-group exercises and walked the campuses to observe lunch periods and transitions from classes.
“It gave the principals opportunity to see, first-hand, the success of K-8 model schools,” McGregor said. “It showed us that we are moving in the right direction, as it pertains to what some of our peers on the mainland are doing and doing well.”
An area of particular interest to the St. Croix K-8 administrators was implementing middle school mentoring on their campuses. This affords older students in grades 6, 7 and 8 to engage in reading, tutoring, and character-building activities with students in the lower grades. To that, McGregor said the host schools have hand no incidents of bullying between the different age groups.
Herman said Woodson and Rampello were selected to tour because the schools serve a similar demographic as the schools on St. Croix.
“The schools are committed to partnering with us through a buddy system that would provide coaching, offer shared resources, provide student resources and other benefits,” she explained.
As the partnership is with Hillsborough County Public Schools, Herman said there could be future relationships forged with their schools and St. Croix high schools and elementary schools, as well.
Upon their return home, the K-8 administrators have held meetings with their school teams to incorporate some of what they’ve learned into their school’s strategic plan. Next school year, the goal is to implement the strategies.
The six school-based administrators who attended the September 23-27 tour included Natasha O’Halloran-Smith, Arthur A. Richards K-8 principal; Lorretta Moorehead, Pearl B. Larsen PreK-8 principal; Anna Gordon, Juanita Gardine K-8 assistant principal; Joanna Brow, Eulalie Rivera K-8 principal; Andrea Hobson, Alfredo Andrews principal and Dureama Moorehead, Claude O. Markoe assistant principal. McGregor, Herman, Jeselle Cruse-Peters, elementary programs coordinator; and Juanita Boneque, mathematics coordinator represented the district.