Guilford Co. Superintendent: Drivers Ed, Minority Achievement Among Back-To-School Issues

Guilford County Schools Superintendent Mo Green updated media ahead of the start of the school year. He discussed several topics, including the progress made by new programs that are helping keep kids in school.

One of them is the African-American Male Initiative, which began as a pilot program in 2012. It's designed to reduce gaps and disparities in performance for minorities  and focuses on reducing suspensions and improving literacy rates among the district's black students. Black students make about 40 percent of the district's population.

Green says the district is also working on ways to improve how it responds to disciplinary actions.

“We started with three schools in elementary, middle and high school saw great, great improvement in the number of students who are remaining in school,” says Green. “One thing that happened is that we certainly reduced the number of African-American students who were being suspended, but we also saw a reduction in  all students who were being suspended.”

The school system will begin rolling out the official data and results from the previous school year during the next school board meeting.

Also during a media briefing on Wednesday, Green addressed driver's education funding for students.

The district is among at least one third of North Carolina's school systems that have suspended their programs this summer because of questions about state funding. Green says the school system is paying roughly $120,000 to fund students who have already started the program.

“For those students who were actually able to complete the classroom part and then go the driving part, there was no state money for them to do that and so we are using local dollars,” says Green. “I would actually contend to you that we should be using that for other opportunities, but because they had started, we felt that they should continue that part of it. That's the sort of balancing act that we're forced to make as we go through this school year.”

Green says the district is looking at outside funding sources to help students pay for driver's education, but it's waiting to see what the official state budget will be before any other decisions are made. One option is to pass the cost onto families, which can range anywhere from more than $200 to $400.  

But one of the biggest challenges facing Guilford County Schools is finding more money to make infrastructure improvements at several buildings. Funding has decreased for repairs and maintenance from the local level over the past few years. Green says the school board plans to meet with county commissioners to talk about possible funding options for the improvements.

He also says the district expects to see continued enrollment growth. Currently, there are more than 72,000 students, making it the third largest school system in the state.

*Follow Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news .