Derek L. McCoy

Thursday January 30th, I was a part of a group of four principals asked to make a presentation to Cumberland County Board of Education. Our schools were once in turnaround status. The state of North Carolina provided additional assistance to our schools because of low test scores. This year however, is the first year that all four schools are out of Turnaround, a great achievement.

I‘m new to Cumberland County Schools (@cumberlandcosch) and Spring Lake Middle but this was a great experience for me. I was able to get to know several other principals in Cumberland and learn about the hard work, support and the journey these schools and administrators took.

My mission for this was clear – celebrate the hard work and success teachers, students and administrators prior to my joining in July 2012 and to make it loud and clear that I was proud to be an part of Spring Lake Middle School. Below is the presentation I put together;

The BOE was very proud of our hard work and commended all principals on their dedication. My assurance to them was that I would continue to work hard at supporting our teachers and students while seeking out and creating new opportunities to raise expectations. We would only improve from this here by continuously working on our efforts to collaborate, effectively use data and make teaching and learning a priority.

A good friend and partner of Spring Lake Middle, Mayor Chris Rey [@chrisvrey] called me the next day to share an article from our local paper [article pdf]. There was a write up about the presentation highlighting some key talking points from all the principals. We had a great conversation talking on how great Spring Lake Middle school is  [the Mayor is a SLMS alumni]. Superintendent Frank Till mentioned that our schools’ success stories were made possible by differentiating support to the schools and providing principals.

Students, teachers, community can all be proud of this tremendous event and feel good in this collective success.