CHHS appeals, earn AYP

Published 12:00 am Thursday, September 10, 2009

Second chances don’t come often, but Charles Henderson High School found itself in the midst of one Wednesday.

After being told earlier in the year the school failed to meet all its annual goals, the system found an error, appealed and were told Wednesday they made the benchmark after all.

“We are obviously happy today to get news we made AYP,” said CHHS Principal David Helms. “For the last three years, we’ve made 100 percent of our goals. This year, they told us we made 16 of 17 goals.”

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But, after hearing the news, Helms said he just wasn’t satisfied.

“We really weren’t satisfied. We checked into the data found that some of the demographics had errors,” Helms said.

The school was initially told it fell short in the reading category for students who receive free and reduced lunches.

This news came after the school had made its benchmark goals for the last three years. Helms said he’s proud to say the school is achieving the state standards for the fourth year in a row.

“We’re very proud of our teachers and students for making it a fourth year in a row,” Helms said. “We want to achieve 100 percent of our goals. We were extremely disappointed when the results came back. It was only one subgroup, but we wanted all kids to be successful.”

Troy City Schools Superintendent Linda Felton-Smith said she was happy to hear the results.

“This means two of our three schools made AYP,” Felton-Smith said. “We’re happy, and we will now turn our focus to preparing our students for what will determine next year’s goals.”

Helms said the AYP results are instrumental in determining the school’s curriculum for the year.

“We start talking about this data in August, and it drives our instruction for the whole year,” Helms said. “We analyze our strengths and weaknesses and build on them. That’s why it’s so important to make AYP.

“We celebrated this morning, but now we’ll move on to make sure we make it next year.”