South Fulton Elementary ‘Reward School’

Reward School status is the top distinction earned, and presented by the Tennessee Department of Education to schools which improve overall student academic achievement and growth.

Among the honorees is South Fulton Elementary School and Principal Laura Pitts could not be more proud of the faculty members and staff who brainstormed and worked countless hours to meet and exceed the criteria for the award.

“We had been at level 5 two years ago,” Pitts said in an interview Monday.

“And then, last year, we were at a 1. I felt so responsible. But this amazing group of teachers came together, we looked at the data, and we talked about what we had done two years ago, what we did not do last year, and what we did do differently. These are the hardest working people. They immediately began to feed me ideas, and we came up with a plan. And it must have worked,” she said.

High achievement, relating to test scores overall, student growth as it relates to how much impact the school has maintained to reflect academic progress and a pro-active approach to attendance were factors which contributed to South Fulton Elementary’s honor.

“Individual student goals were set, realistic goals,” Pitts said, with incentives developed to allow students the opportunity to earn rewards themselves for meeting or exceeding those goals, relating to scores.

Pitts recalled how Assistant Principal Lynn Pilcher, as well as classroom teachers, took it upon themselves to make contact with students and their families, encouraging attendance, especially to those who might be considered “chronically” absent.

“It is so important for our students to be at school. Sometimes parents don’t understand, that regardless of whether the absence is excused or unexcused, the state makes no distinction. It is an absence, and that means they do not have classroom time with their teacher. That is so important,” she said, adding SFES recorded a 7.8% chronically absent number of students, lower than the state’s consideration for chronically absent designation, which is 10%.

As to test scores, Pitts points out that 51.3% of students in grades three through five achieved “On Track” or “Mastered” scores.

“There are four levels, relating to the results of test scores, which are “Below, or Basic”, “Approaching”, “On Track” and “Mastered”. That means that over half of our students scored the “On Track” or “Mastered” ranking,” she said.

The Principal praised the team effort on behalf of the teachers, in fine tuning the process to turn the previous year’s results around, including benchmark testing to identify specific goals in students’ scores, creating incentives for students, development of conceptual math learning, a nine week countdown program to testing with weekly focus specifics and test taking strategies to encourage students to think about and discuss answers to questions.

“I just can’t say enough about our faculty. They work so hard. There have been times when I would have to tell them to go home. We have followed through, as a theme for this school year, with a theme used during our Summer reading program, Camp Reel. So we are using a camp theme for our school year this year. We are all excited,” Pitts said, as she displayed the “camp” t-shirts, worn by the faculty for the group photo taken prior to the interview.

The shirt, in addition to the camp theme, included the words to push for creating in students “kind hearts, brave spirits, fierce minds.”

“That’s what we want to do,” Pitts said.

In addition to South Fulton Elementary, Obion County’s Hillcrest School also achieved the distinction of Tennessee Reward School.