Congrats to Our Great Lake Norman Area Schools!

When people with children plan to move to the Lake Norman area, the conversation always gets around to quality of schools.  That’s understandable since everyone wants their kids to have a good education.  My general response is always that for the south Iredell County area, you can’t go wrong with either the local Iredell-Statesville schools or the Mooresville Graded School System schools.  That advice has recently been supported by the fact that both Lake Norman High School and Mooresville High School received awards from the NC Department of Public Instruction for their high graduation rates relative to schools of similar size in the state.  HERE’s an article on the details from the Statesville Record & Landmark.

Statistics like these are wonderful for school systems and are a rough measure of what you can expect in overall student performance.  If you want to look at lots of performance stats for area schools, I have plenty of links on this site to both local and state reports.  However, I always caution my clients to understand that at the individual student level, the school is important, but what the student and parents put into the process is more so.  I’ve been around teaching all my life, with a mother who taught high school subjects her whole career, a brother who is an award-winning history teacher, and a spouse who is viewed as one of the top Kindergarten teachers in the Mooresville system.  I’ve spent a lot of time talking about kids and learning.  One conclusion I’ve drawn is that any child in most any classroom can get a very good education IF they learn to make the most of what’s provided by the school and the teacher, and IF the parents provide the necessary support, encouragement and discipline at home.  I believe that all of the schools in our area surrounding Lake Norman can provide children with a great education.  You’ve just got to pay attention to the IFs.

In other words, the smart kids with supportive parents will do fine in any area school.

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NC School Report Cards are Here

Being related to a bunch of public school teachers, and being friends with many more, I know that a large amount of time is required for the teachers to report lots of data about their students’ performance.  All of that comes into play in providing “report cards” for the state, our school districts, and individual schools.  You can see the results of all of this reporting, and examine the  performance of specific schools at a web site provided by the NC Department of Public Instruction.  You can see the reports for the 2008-2009 school year by clicking HERE.

School performance is important to many people.  Some use this information to decide where to move their home if they’re new to the area.  Others use it to decide if they should move from where they are now.  Businesses are very aware of this interest in educational quality, so they use this information in their choices of moving businesses so that they can attract quality employees.  So, even if you don’t now have children in the schools, the quality of the schools can have a strong impact on the economic vitality of a community. 

Communities grow or die for a variety of reasons, but school quality is clearly one of the determining factors.  In Iredell County we’re fortunate to be able to report some very good numbers.  One thing to keep in mind, though, is that these numbers reflect each school as a whole.  Many schools are challenged by a variety of circumstances that they can’t control that may tend to push some numbers down.  Yet, in every school, there are dedicated, hard-working teachers who provide quality education at a student-by-student level.  I suggest you may want to spend a good bit of your attention on the teacher quality section of the reports.

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Iredell-Statesville School Chief Picked for Kentucky Post

Iredell-Statesville Schools Superintendent, Dr. Terry Holliday, has been tapped to head the Kentucky public school system.  HERE is a Record & Landmark article on this.  During his time here, he has improved the school system significantly in terms of a variety of statistics and standings relative to other NC school systems.  Based on my conversations with potential out- of-area clients, those numbers are of particular interest to people who are considering a move to our area.  We’re fortunate to have some very good stats to show to those folks, both for Iredell-Statesville and Mooresville schools.  Good schools add dramatically to the quality of life and economic vitality of a community.

While working here, Dr. Holliday developed a reputation as a tough administrator and something less than Mr. Personality.  I’ve heard a number of teachers in the system describe their irritation with his approach to moving the school toward greater performance.  Actually, their comments sort of remind me of those of many students over the years who were not keen on a particular tough teacher’s methods.  Still, in hindsight they may grudgingly admit that the teacher did manage to get good results. 

I hope that Dr. Holliday’s replacement will be able to continue the progress made by the school system, but maybe he or she will incorporate a bit better approach to professional relations with the teachers.  Teachers today have very high expectations imposed on them with much more demanded of them than just good classroom performance.  Low teacher morale can destroy any gains very quickly.  It’s a tough balance to strike in an administrator, but one that should be high on the school board’s shopping list.

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Fall Football in Mooresville

Writing about Mooresville Middle School made me think of how much my wife, Susan, and I enjoy going to the football games in Mooresville every Fall- our excellent stadium is on the grounds of Mooresville Middle School.  Our daughters have long since graduated, but we’ve kept season tickets to the Mooresville High football games.  Our seats are great, and the gathering of a large slice of the community at Friday night home games takes me back to when I was growing up in Troutman, and all schools represented the very local community.  Our rather unique city school system assures that things don’t get too big and disconnected from the people that live in the community, and the football games are a good indicator of how well that works.  There are many, like me and Susan, whose children are now grown, but they still love to come out on a crisp Fall evening and support the Blue Devils football team.  It doesn’t hurt that historically we’ve had consistently good teams as is the case this year.  I’m proud to say that we are friends with the family of the star quarterback, Nathan Abraham.  Susan and I sing in the choir at St. Mark’s Lutheran with Nathan’s father, Mitch, and his mother, Priscilla, who plays our organ and piano.  Mitch is also a member of the town council.  That kind of being able to easily get to know people around town is a mark of good small town living.   By the way, the hotdogs at the football games are worth the trip!

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