NORTHSIDE HIGH SCHOOL GETS NEW PRINCIPAL

Keri Rathbun, who was the principal at Kimmons Junior High, is the new principal at Northside, replacing Ginni McDonald, who will be the new director of secondary education. When McDonald came to Northside nine years ago, the graduation rate was 68 percent. It is now at 84 percent. Rathbun plans to use her first year to listen and learn about the school and carry on with what McDonald has already implemented to improve the graduation rates, such as the School of Innovation program, which alters the bell schedule so that there is 40-minute “Huddle” period worked into the school day Monday through Thursday that the students can use to get extra help with academics, counseling or for an extracurricular activity. Rathbun will also begin searching for a graduation coach who will be there to mentor students who are at risk of not graduating but also be a resource to help all students with scholarship opportunities, she said. The goal is to have someone who can catch at-risk students when they come into the 10th-grade and be there to monitor how they are doing, check in with them regularly and be there for support. When Rathbun was at Kimmons, she, with the help of the counselors, started a mentor program, she said. About 16 mentors from the community came in twice a month to meet with students to talk about their grades, attendance, discipline issues or to just listen to them, Rathbun said. The program has more than doubled in size since it started a few years ago. Rathbun was a counselor at Northside for three years before moving to Kimmons. Working in the high school allows her to help guide the students on their post-graduation plans, she said. “I like working with high school students,” Rathbun said. “They’re easy to talk to. It’s exciting to help them plan what they’re going to do after high school.” The reason Rathbun went into administration was to be able to affect more students, she said. That’s the same reason McDonald said she took the director of secondary education position. “I thought it would be an opportunity to make a larger impact on the lives of kids,” McDonald said. McDonald knows Northside inside and out, so the first thing she wants to do in her new position is reach out to the junior highs and Southside High School to learn more about their schools and their needs. For McDonald, leaving Northside, a place she said she gave a little bit of her heart and soul, means leaving a place where the culture was one where a student could walk in and easily make friends, she said. “There is a level of acceptance here that I just have not seen at any other place else ever,” McDonald said. “I still love the first day of school,” she said. “To be able to see all the bright and shiny faces and even a little bit of anxiety on the sophomores. Then when they become a senior and you get to see them as a grownup on their way out — there’s just not another experience like that. Then you see students at prom, you see students at senior banquet, you see students at graduation and you think that in some small way you may have an impact on those students.” When McDonald came to Northisde and nearly a third of the students weren’t graduating, she wanted to know why. “I just believed that we were so much more than 68 percent,” she said. She found that it was not for lack of work ethic on the staff’s part. “I didn’t want them to work harder. I wanted them to work smarter,” she said. The goal has been to build up in students’ minds that they have options past high school and to show them what some of those options are. The staff worked to expose them to career and higher learning opportunities that they may not have known existed. And students’ plans go up on the walls at Northside — where they are going to college or technical school, what career path they are going into, if they are going into the military. “We were just relentless. It was not an option anymore. It was not an option to quit school. It was not an option to go to Adult Ed,” McDonald said. The district’s former director of secondary education, Martin Mahan, is now the assistant superintendent for human resources, following Annette Henderson’s retirement.

NORTHSIDE HIGH SCHOOL GETS NEW PRINCIPAL

ALEX GOLDEN

Times Record | 7/3/2017

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Golden