Hickman Mills schools need big improvements
The Hickman Mills School District is in an academic hole now that the State Board of Education has lowered it from full to provisional accreditation. It’s an uncomfortable, disquieting development.
For the sake of the 6,300 students and the south Kansas City community, district officials and the school board must use every means necessary to regain full accreditation.
Hickman Mills in 2011-12 slipped to meeting seven out of a possible 14 standards; it had met nine the previous year. But its problems became noticeable as early as 2009, when the district reached only six standards.
Hard work followed to raise students’ academic performance, and that’s what’s needed once again.
“They need to get unified and attack the problem,” said Tony Stansberry, state area supervisor with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which promises the district more help.
That’s good. Hickman Mills officials say they will add more resources for reading and math specialists in the district, where 86 percent of the students receive free or reduced lunches. More teachers will be added at the elementary level, with increased monitoring on students’ academic performance. Instead of using an outside firm for tutoring, teachers will do the work.
“They know where the kids need the help,” said John Baccala, the district’s director of media relations.
The Hickman Mills district has three years to get back to full accreditation, and the goal certainly is achievable. But parents, businesses, faith communities and others will have to help. The students also have to know what’s at stake so they can shoulder their share of the load.
William R. Nelson
8 months agoMy wife and I grew up in the Ruskin/Hickman Mills district during the 60’s and 70’s.
It was a thriving blue collar suburb with mom n pop stores, local diners, ranch houses, and an abundance of kids riding bikes and walking to friends’ houses.
We went to school with kids from all backgrounds, ethnicity and income levels. Skipping school to see a movie or stoners smoking weed in cars was the extent of deliquent scandal. Neither of us can recall a single incident of school violence.
We were average kids, in an average school, with average grades, yet a pretty good football team. The Ruskin/Hickman Mills district was a nice, quiet place to grow up.
Then came the 90’s, Bill Clinton, the community re-investment act, HUD housing, and sub-prime or ‘liars loans’ - which required banks to loan money to people who couldn’t afford it.
To be blunt, the ghetto was imported from mid-town to south town by govt. edict.
The truancy, violence and gangs escalated; Property values, business and MAP scores plummeted.
The decent folks of all colors finally had enough when thugs would brazenly rob and assault people at Bannister Mall in broad daylight. That mall is now a bull dozed mound of dirt n gravel.
“But parents, businesses, faith communities and others will have to help. The students also have to know what’s at stake so they can shoulder their share of the load.”
That’s a long hard road when teenage unemployment is +20% and all that’s left out there are empty buildings and boarded up houses.
Good luck.