The future is now for the McComb School System.
“A lot of people want the school system to return to what it was,” Superintendent Therese Palmertree told the McComb Lions Club on Tuesday. “Everyone wants to go back to the way things used to be, but we can’t.
“What we can do is transform ourselves and look into the future,” she said.
That means improving the school system’s ability to better educate its students for the world they will face, and ensuring that more students remain in school to get that education.
And that, in turn, makes the community better and helps it improve.
“I firmly believe in ‘so goes the public school system, so goes the community,’ ” Palmertree said, adding that was the reason she began the “Why Education?” program.
“We talk about education, but I felt it had become a hollow word,” she said, adding that she believed the community needed to come together to determine how to best educate its children.
Palmertree said school officials have worked to build partnerships with churches, civic and community groups and residents that are focused on education and preventing dropouts.
She said 50 percent of Mississippi’s students drop out of school each year.
“That’s 13,000 students a year dropping out of school in Mississippi,” she said. “The population of McComb stays about 13,000.
That means every year we lose a community the size of McComb.
“Where do they go? Some go to prison, some go to the streets. Either way, they become an additional burden on the taxpayer,” Palmertree said.
Locally, she said, McComb during the 2007-’08 school year had the lowest dropout rate of any of Pike County’s school districts.
Palmertree said the school system staff has been working on plans to improve the school system for the past two years, adding, “We’re ready to put those plans into action.”
The school system’s program draws on recommendations developed by America’s Promise Alliance, an organization developed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his wife to coordinate volunteer efforts to help children and youth.
It’s focused along five points that officials with the America’s Promise Alliance believes are important if a school system is to succeed:
• Caring adults in children’s lives.
Palmertree said the school system is looking for adults willing to work with students as a tutor or mentor.
“Children need someone who will tell them, ‘You can do it. You’re doing a good job’; to remind them that they have a bright future,” she said.
“I’m asking for your prayers,” she said. “We’re in a life-and-death struggle to save our school system and our youth.”
• A healthy start at a good life.
Children need exposure to reading and other subjects at an early life, Palmertree said.
“When my children were small, I read to them and they played with books,” she said. “Not many children have that. We have a lot of children who start school behind and have to catch up.”
• Safe places 24 hours a day.
The McComb School System offers a large number of extracurricular activities to students, from sports to academic-type programs, Palmertree said. A lot of students in the system participate in the after-school programs, she said, but many more do not.
“We have to find a way to get these children involved in activities,” she said, adding that local churches have been working with children at the Tiger Activity Center.
• Effective education.
“That’s what we’re all about,” Palmertree said.
She said school officials are working on programs that will prepare students for what the area will be 10 years from now.
• Opportunities to give back through community service.
Palmertree said the school system is working on service-education type programs that will involve students from kindergarten to 12th grade in some type of community service programs.
“What better way to have a strong feeling of self worth than to give something back to someone?” she asked.
“It takes all of us caring to make a difference,” Palmertree said. “What I want to do is have a school system where each and every one of you would be pleased to have your grandchildren, children, nieces and nephews to attend McComb School District.” is working on service-education type programs that will involve students from kindergarten to 12th grade in some type of community service programs.
“What better way to have a strong feeling of self worth that to give something back to someone?” she asked.
“It takes all of us carrying to make a difference,” Palmertree said. “What I want to do is have a school system where each and everyone of you would be pleased to have your grandchildren, children, nieces and nephews to attend McComb School District.”
