Two years ago, a school district had lost their accreditation with the state. Hundreds of students transfered to other school districts, with FHSD being one of the most popular choices among the transfer students. Today, the Normandy Schoodl District has been working to regain accreditation with the state. Recently, I spoke with Normandy’s Assistant Superintendent Candice Carter-Oliver to speak about the district’s past, present and future.

Q: What were some of the struggles faced by the district when they lost accreditation?

A: “The primary struggle that the district had at the time of take over by… the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education was student achievement.”

Q: Has Normandy regained accreditation with the state? If not, what is being done to regain accreditation?

A: “No, the district is currently classified as unaccredited, as of January 2013. First and foremost, because we are aiming to improve student achievement, we align our budget so that it’s a budget for improvement in student learning in every classroom, so what you’ll find is concentration in curriculum, the writing of curriculum as well as the analysis of curriculum.”

Q: How has the situation in Normandy changed? Has it gotten better or worse?

A: “The feedback from students, the community, the feedback from parents, it is definitely better this year than it was last year. Now that does not mean we don’t have some areas of growth, we do… We hire specifically now teachers and leaders who are culturally responsive… We’re excited about the direction we’re headed.”

Q: How have the students reacted since the situation began to wear it’s gotten now?

A: “Things are quite a bit better, she [a student interviewed by the St. Louis Post Dispatch] also believes that students leaving the district does not solve the problem when it comes down to the district achieving… It’s all about us working together to improve that… I bet that’s been pretty much every students perspective.”

Q: What is the biggest difficulty faced by the Normandy school district today?

A: “I think that the major difficulty that Normandy has is improving student performance within a short period of time. What we know is that learning takes time and improvement takes time, and when a district is classified as unaccredited, you have students participating in the transfer program, it pulls recourses from the district. So while you need to improve student achievement soon, you’re limited in your recourses that you have.”

Q: How did the transfers impact the Normandy district?

A: “It impacted the district in probably two major ways, one would be financial. For this year’s budget, we budgeted $7.85 million to pay for the student transfer program. That’s because of the various tuition rates that the districts charge… Second to that financial factor would be the recourses in the district to ensure that the program is run and ran efficiently. What that means is that there is time spent in application, there’s time spent in residency verification, there’s time spent in records going from one school to another…”

Q: How do you see Normandy improving in the future?

A: “I see it improving in a number of ways… We are looking at ways to further enhance current curricular offerings, we are lookingto further our partnership with UMSL… There’s a number of things among vision that we have.”

Normandy has also been hiring teaching specialists to help new teachers and have been looking to improve that early childhood education in the district. They’ve also been implementing numerous classes involving different science and art fields. They’ve also partnered with St. Louis Community College and UMSL to help students earn college credits. All of this is being done so Normandy can regain accreditation with the state so students are given a better chance to succeed after they leave the school district behind. According to Carter-Oliver, the future is bright for Normandy.