By Sharon Myers
The Dispatch
LEXINGTON, N.C. — The Lexington City Schools Board of Education announced the addition of a new public safety academy that would begin at Lexington Senior High School next fall.
Nicole Piggott, director of secondary instruction and supervisor of career technical education for the Lexington City School System, said the new program would include classes focused on law enforcement, firefighting, EMT training and other public safety careers.
She said by offering these classes, students could explore fields in public safety that they may be interested in making into a career after high school.
“This is very exciting,” Piggott said. “Our goal is to offer another avenue for our students to secure their future and have those fields available to them when they leave us.”
Phil Hartley, chief of Lexington Fire Department, said that by offering these classes, not only would it increase the number of students going into public safety, but could also increase the number of students applying at local agencies.
“There has been a sharp decline in the number of applications we receive and there has been a decline in the number of students attending (basic law enforcement training),” Hartley said. “I am a firm believer that public safety should be a reflection of the community. Public safety career education would benefit this community and the students.”
The board of education unanimously approved a one-year contract with Family Services of Davidson County to provide in-school counseling for students who may be impacted by domestic violence, drug abuse, bullying or any other issues affecting them.
These counseling sessions would be available for students at the middle school and high schools through a grant awarded to Family Services of Davidson County.
Also during the meeting, Garrett Holloway, diversity, equity and inclusion facilitator for Lexington City Schools, gave a presentation to the board discussing the number of disciplinary referrals at the middle school and high school levels last year.
He said that attempts which began last year, which are not reflected in these numbers, have already begun to have an impact on the number of disciplinary referrals.
“The numbers you are about to see are in no way indicative of how our students are doing in reference to discipline this year,” Holloway said. “For example, last school year on the 26th day of school in our district we had 96 disciplinary referrals, at the end of today we have only had 56. So we are already beginning to see a reduction.”
According to his report, out of the 830 discipline referrals last year at Lexington Middle School, 54 percent were African-American; 23 percent were Caucasian and 17 percent were Hispanic.
Sean Gaillard, principal at Lexington Middle School, said the staff are doing several things to reduce the number of disciplinary referrals.
“One is thing is we have set a schoolwide goal of 75 percent reduction in referrals across the board,” Gaillard said. “Also every disciplinary referral goes through me and in some cases we counsel our administrators to think of an alternative strategy. I am also getting weekly discipline reports to pinpoint certain hotspots where we are noticing trends and try to be visible in those hotspots.”
Lexington Senior High School had 172 disciplinary referrals last year and 71 percent were African American, four percent Hispanic and 20 percent were Caucasian.
Jacket Academy, which is the in-school suspension program located at Lexington Middle School, received 72 referral from the high school and 165 referrals from the middle school.
Monique Curry, principal of Lexington Senior High, said the staff and faculty have tried to take a different approach to discipline instead of issuing immediate referrals.
“If you want to get referrals down, you have to build relationships,” Curry said. “We have to foster those environments that make it easier for staff members and administrators to work with students and build those relationships that are necessary to bridge that gap of understanding.”
She said they are also working with staff collaboration, including the creation of a faculty forum, which allows teachers to discuss classroom management strategies that would help them work with different students.
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