• Category 1

    Selected in 2017

  • Grades: pre k - 4
    School Setting: suburban
    Town Population: 60,000
    Student Enrollment: 540
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 22%
    White/Caucasian: 51%
    Hispanic: 17%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 10%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:17
    % Reduced Lunch: 62%
    % ELL Learners: 10%
    Founded: 1957
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Carol McGill
  • CONTACT:
    1405 Lester Harris Road
    Johnson City, TN 37601
    423-434-5275
    mcgillc@jcschools.org
Fairmont Elementary School
Johnson City, TN
Family and community support is vital to all school success.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
Family and Community support is vital to all school success. At Fairmont, our parent attendance at all programs, meetings and events always nears 90 per cent. We have to have many events by grade levels to be able to serve the attendees. Our community has a long- term, city-wide reputation of positive school supports and involvement. We have monthly parent meetings, family tech nights, open houses, grade level meetings, weekly and monthly parent/family/community newsletters. We use our technologies to support vital parent connections.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
Our Parent/Teacher Organization established local businesses and agencies to volunteer at Fairmont. Their emphasis has been to assure that every at-risk early learner has an additional mentor to read with them every week, sometimes every morning.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
Our school leadership prescribes to the theory that we must continue to seek improvements through staff development passionately. We actively pursue opportunities to learn from other successful educators and to attend research based staff development opportunities. We believe that schools should intentionally seek and drive instruction through continuous improvements and change in order to be successful.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
Our schools top two goals for next year:
1. To use our new one- to- one technologies with rigorous academic focus.
2. To continue to encourage and support non-fiction reading goals.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
The single most important factor that we achieve that could be replicated is the positive, passion in reading that we instill in our students.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
Our early literacy, academic, standards- driven program has had the most positive effect on our student achievement. As research has proven, a strong reading focus in the early grades has the most significant impact on overall academic attainment, as well as gap closure. We provide many supports in the early grades to propel reading success forward. Each classroom contains extensive multi-genre libraries which are used for daily independent-choice reading. Kindergarten and first grade students receive daily differentiated support on independently selected books and take home these three to five books every night to read with their families which is their only home to school assignment. Parent partnerships focus on methods to enable the home to encourage emergent readers and their growth in literacy. By the end of the year more than 90% of the kindergarteners are fluent readers who score within the 90th percentiles and above across district-wide reading benchmark assessments.
Explain how Title I funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
Title I funds most profoundly enable our school to have small teacher to student ratios. We currently have four teachers funded for class size reduction. Additional funds are used to assure that quality classroom libraries and reading supports directly target the at-risk students.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
Our school has had "Learning Focused" staff development programs to maintain our consistent, unified planning and strategies. Our Profressional Learning teams plan classroom instruction centered on the state standards through the "Learning Focused" strategies.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
We use data daily to assure students achievement. Teachers have data meetings once a week to drive their planning and instruction. We share our data with all stakeholders through our newsletters and weekly updates. Our school uses data to provide current material and human resource needs. The administration uses data to make student and teacher assignments. We firmly believe that what is measured is valued!
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
Our school culture is focused on students with a priority on their learning with high expectations. We have expanded our extended learning, after school programs to include more STEM activities with enrichment extensions. We provide transportation for our after school learners so that all students can benefit from additional time and resources.
Stats
  • Category 1

    Selected in 2017

  • Grades: pre k - 4
    School Setting: suburban
    Town Population: 60,000
    Student Enrollment: 540
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 22%
    White/Caucasian: 51%
    Hispanic: 17%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 10%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:17
    % Reduced Lunch: 62%
    % ELL Learners: 10%
    Founded: 1957
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Carol McGill
  • CONTACT:
    1405 Lester Harris Road
    Johnson City, TN 37601
    423-434-5275
    mcgillc@jcschools.org