Over the past year, Parents for Public Schools of Pitt County spoke with 262 people in 21 conversations to get a feel from parents and community about your experiences with public education in Pitt County. At many of these conversations, we asked you to think about PPS-PC as a car, and imagine that you were putting your voice in that car and allowing us to drive it to our key decision makers for Pitt County Schools. We are thankful for the wide variety of responses we received from so many of you.
We are proud to report that on June 4th, our Executive Director Kylene Dibble gave both an oral and written report to the Board of Education. The oral report summarized the top themes of the conversations from this past year, and the written version reported (anonymously) every thought and experience you shared with us this year. Some themes that rose to the top included:
- Continued positive assessment of PCS in general
- Great satisfaction with PCS’ community collaboration, particularly in endeavors with ECU and Pitt Community College
- A desire to see more safety measures implemented in the schools (something being worked on by PCS as we speak)
- Suggestions that office staff receive hospitality training to understand how they can better serve you–the customers of Pitt County Schools, and quite a
- Mixed feelings about school size challenges: most people were happy with open enrollment, some people would be interested in better understanding redistricting, some would like to see new schools built to address the issues
- Concerns about too much standardized testing
- Suggestions that the school system look closely at what is working really well as some schools, and replicate it in others as a way of making them even more desirable.
The Board of Education was grateful for this input from parents and community members. One Board member said he felt that the report was a snapshot of the community and gave him insight into how to best understand the needs of the community. Other members of the BOE have since said that this report is a helpful guide and a tool that they often refer to when discussing policy changes.
You can see the executive summary of the report on our website: www.ppspittcounty.org
Community conversations for the 2018-2019 school year are already underway. If you know of a group that would like to share their experiences with public education in Pitt County, please have them contact our Executive Director, Kylene Dibble, at kdibble@ppspittcounty.org or 252-758-1604 ext. 201. We can schedule a conversation for groups that have regularly scheduled meetings, or for any group of parents or community members who want to share their thoughts.
