Academic Questions For the Rock Hill School Board

What academic clubs are in place and what are the plans to add more? 
Each school has its own set of clubs. Some at the high schools include Beta Club, National Honor Society, Environmental Club, Robotics Club, International Club (or language-specific clubs like Spanish or French), History Club, Junior Marshals, Future Business Leaders of America, Thespians, Model United Nations, Kitty Hawk Air Society, Literary Magazine, and Yearbook. Parents can get a complete list from their child’s school and can work with the principal to form more clubs. Forming a new club requires student interest and an adult willing to sponsor.

What successful school districts are we benchmarking? 
We benchmark against other districts and schools with a similar poverty index such as Oconee, Kershaw, Lancaster, Anderson 5, Spartanburg 2, and Beaufort.

How do Rock Hill Schools rank nationally? 
We do not have national rankings per se. We do have nationally normed test data such as the SAT and ACT. The district administration will be posting a district dashboard on the web site with comparisons to schools similar to ours. Target for this to get started is the first of 2012. You can click here to see some SC state report card comparisons for the York County School Districts.

What are the schools doing to improve graduation rates? What are we doing to improve test scores?  We are reducing failure rates by offering mastery based credit vs. seat time; offering courses for credit and content recovery; allowing alternative instructional time (Phoenix Academy) to improve literacy abilities K-12; differentiating instruction; responding to the individual needs of students in math and reading; and increasing 4K programs to improve readiness for school. However, progress has been very slow.