Within the past two weeks, Columbus Municipal School District and Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District voted to sever ties with Golden Triangle Early College High School (GTECHS). Lowndes County School District is expected to take the issue up tomorrow.
GTECHS, which opened in the 2015-16 school year, allows select area high school students to take college courses and graduate high school with associates degrees. It’s open to students from Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee counties.
CMSD’s and SOCSD’s concerns about their relationship with GTECHS are legitimate.
Those two districts each send more than 40 students to GTECHS at an estimated cost of $250,000 a year. Both now offer their own dual enrollment opportunities, which were not available when GTECHS was created, and both say they can more efficiently serve students with those programs.
Additionally, SOCSD’s superintendent expressed concern that GTECHS has been operated essentially as a private school that uses public dollars. In fact, numbers seen by The Dispatch but which are not public, suggest 73 percent (11 students) of private and homeschool students from Columbus collectively have been accepted to GTECHS since its founding. Only 55 percent (64 students) of applicants from Columbus Middle School have been accepted.
GTECHS supporters assert the school is for children who may not thrive in a traditional school setting, which is pretty broad criteria. But The Dispatch’s coverage of the creation of the school suggests the original intent of the school was to target a more narrow segment of students. A Mississippi State University research specialist who helped craft GTECHS said, “We are looking for students that, for whatever reason, might not be on track to continue their education beyond high school. These are students that might not take Advanced Placement courses in high school, but could excel with extra support.” The story also said, “School officials are especially interested in students from low income, minority and/or first generation college students.”
Certainly, those students exist in private and homeschool settings, but one would assume this criteria would find more matches in public schools.
At some point between the planning of GTECHS and now, there seems to have been a bit of “mission creep.”
So, again, the districts’ concerns are legitimate, certainly.
Yet it appears both CMSD and SOCSD decided to pull the plug on the program with only minimal efforts to work out solutions to those problems with administrators from GTECHS and East Mississippi Community College, which hosts the school.
If GTECHS and EMCC were afforded little opportunity to engage with CMSD and SOCSD on this issue, current GTECHS students and parents were provided even less of one.
These decisions to withdraw from GTECHS directly affect nearly 100 students and their high school experiences. For them, this decision is not about the efficiency of dollars. For them, the benefit of GTECHS is not limited strictly to earning dual enrollment college credit.
Over the past week, this paper has run nearly a dozen letters to the editor from GTECHS students and parents who describe an enriching educational environment.
While we still support the mission of GTECHS and the educational opportunities it provides, we share with area school districts serious concerns about how the program is administered.
But we also believe existing students should not be uprooted from GTECHS over these administrative issues.
Public education in general needs help, and ultimately GTECHS represents an experiment in an alternate way to educate students with tax dollars. We think such experiments are healthy and lament the fact that this one is falling apart without a meaningful attempt to address the issues.
Let’s hope there is still a path that would allow those negotiations to happen.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.