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“What can we do better? How can we improve? What are we doing well?”
These are the questions that Dr. Steve Lassiter, the interim superintendent of Pitt County Schools, is asking himself and the community as the school year begins.
He’s not wasting time either. During the first four days of the school year, Lassiter visited all 39 schools in the district (38 schools plus one virtual school that Lassiter considers a site). All in all, he drove hundreds of miles during that first week to spend time with as many students and educators as possible.
From global education programs, early colleges, a Health Sciences Academy and an elementary school on East Carolina University’s campus, and more, Pitt County Schools has a variety of options for students. According to Lassiter, the community has responded well to the options they offer.
“We have a lot of great partnerships and connections, and our community supports our public schools,” Lassiter said. “When people move here, they’re choosing to send their children to public schools here in Pitt County because we’re doing a great job, and it’s because we are so interconnected.”
Listening to students, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders is a priority for Lassiter, but it’s not his only one. In addition, he’s prioritizing addressing the growth the district has seen.
“We’re growing. We’re up right now to a significant number of students, and as I’ve shared before, we’re growing in certain parts of the county, and so we need to have conversations on how we address that growth,” Lassiter said. “Parents have already said that that’s something that’s important, and so I’ll be working with our board and our executive director of operations on what that looks like in the near future.”
By the numbers
Pitt County is located in eastern North Carolina. Pitt County Schools has over 24,000 students across its 38 schools and one virtual school.
Below you’ll find more data on Pitt County from U.S. Census Quick Facts and the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Global education
One of Pitt County Schools’ options for students is a global education program in the form of a multilingual learner program and a dual language immersion program. This year, the dual language immersion program is celebrating a milestone.
“This is a big year for us. We’re going to celebrate 10 years of dual language immersion,” said Hannah Butler, the coordinator of global education for Pitt County Schools.
The dual language immersion program started at Belvoir Elementary School. The school uses a 50/50 model, which means that students have alternating days of study in English and Spanish for the same coursework. This way, they are able to learn the coursework in both languages.
The school’s reasoning behind choosing the 50/50 model was because of the needs of the community. Today, the dual language immersion program is offered at three schools: Belvoir Elementary, Elmhurst Elementary, and the Pactolus Global School.
“You have to consider the student population, and at Belvoir, they have a very high Hispanic population with lots of new immigrant students coming in,” said Butler.
Students that participate in the 50/50 immersion program in elementary school have the opportunity to progress their learning in middle school. Upon graduating from the immersion program in elementary school, students earn the title of heritage speaker. In middle school, they can take a course called conexiones, which is just for the heritage speakers. At this point, their only literacy instruction in that class is in Spanish.
With the foundation from conexiones, the students are encouraged to apply their Spanish knowledge outside of the classroom to encourage increased language proficiency. This allows students to apply their Spanish in a way that is meaningful to them both inside the classroom and in their outside lives.
“They take all of that foundation and they start to apply it… they use their Spanish skills to identify problems, to talk about ways to solve problems in the world,” said Butler.
The conexiones program uses the United Nations sustainable goals as the backbone of their course. The middle school program culminates at a model United Nations seminar at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in eighth grade.
“This is Model UN in Spanish. So they are defending a topic, they research the topic, they come prepared, and then they get on that podium in front of all of their peers and dignitaries as part of the UNCG campus and defend their position in a language that may or may not be the language spoken in their home,” said Butler.
In addition to the dual language program, another way Pitt County Schools supports its global education offering is through hosting international teachers. As the school year begins, Pitt County Schools is working to help them adjust to the country and to their local community.
Health Sciences Academy
The Health Sciences Academy is a specialized curriculum for high school students who want to pursue health care or health care related careers. The program is available to students enrolled in any of the six traditional high schools and the early college in Pitt County. East Carolina University and Pitt Community College are both partners of the academy, and many students pursue health care related degrees at one of or both of the schools upon graduating from high school.
“We have so much local talent in this area, and one of the neat things about this area, we have something I call the geographical advantage, meaning Greenville is big enough,” said Reed Potts, the Health Sciences Academy program coordinator. “We have a first-class community college. We have a university, first-class medical school, school of dental medicine, all of these entities that we can work with, but it’s small enough where we all know each other to pick up the phone and we collaborate. And that’s the beauty of it.”
In addition to health care courses, the Health Sciences Academy offers support for students learning to write resumes. They also provide free SAT and ACT training.
“The really rewarding thing … is the journey of discovery as they come through the program and where they find their passion. Roughly 90% of the kids who go through the program wind up going into, you know, a medical path in their higher learning,” said Potts.
Potts shared that they have an exciting year ahead with a schedule full of student-focused events. He shares the sentiment with Lassiter that reflecting and asking questions going into the school year can make a difference in how the year pans out.
“Going through each year, I’m always thinking, ‘What can I do better? What other events? How can we keep raising the bar?’ And, you know, just the whole experience each year, exponentially, I pick up more things, and it picks up more momentum. The energy picks up. It grows. It keeps growing,” said Potts.
