Three troubled schools on road to recovery

Valerie Miller

Wednesday, April 26, 2000 | 9:42 a.m.

Board meeting

Three elementary schools that failed to meet state academic standards are now receiving praise from Clark County School District Superintendent Brian Cram.

Booker Elementary School is no longer under special scrutiny, and the other two schools, H.P. Fitzgerald and Madison, are continuing to follow a plan that is expected to improve learning.

The schools, after their students registered poor scores on standardized tests, were put on the state's list of schools in need of improvement in the spring of 1998.

"You can see that the schools are putting a pretty good effort into this," Cram said. "They are working very hard to be taken off the list."

Reports on the three schools will be delivered to the School Board at its regular meeting Thursday night.

Three separate, nine-member panels, one for each school, prepared the reports. Members of the panels were appointed by Mary Peterson, state superintendent of public instruction. Panel members consisted of educators, business people, private citizens and members of the state Department of Education.

School District Superintendent Brian Cram said he felt the panel members would be positive overall in their evaluation of the schools.

"I think they will say the schools are trying their best here," Cram said. "Everybody is working very hard to improve those schools."

Fitzgerald and Madison have been on the state's list of schools in need of improvement for the third year in a row, while Booker was just taken off the list this month.

"I'm very proud of Booker and what they've accomplished," Peterson said Tuesday. "I'm confident we'll see similar improvement at Madison and Fitzgerald.

The panel evaluated and made recommendations on many facets of the schools, including principals, the turnover rate of teachers, student disciplinary problems, safety concerns, curriculum and progress of school programs.

Among the recommendations the panels made were to maintain the principals of Booker and Madison, while recommending another principal or former principal to mentor Fitzgerald principal Leary Adams.

Other panel findings concluded that the school district had not been responsive enough to requests made by Madison to do needed repairs to the school, resulting in safety concerns.

Valerie Miller is a reporter for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-2319 or by e-mail at valerie@lasvegassun.com