Aspiring engineers wanted

By Anna Mitchell  

DECEMBER 18, 2009 10:02 a.m. (0)

A.J. Whittenberg Elementary will be ready for its new principal in January.

Her first job will be to recruit students to fill up more than 200 spots available to early elementary children all over the county. Attendance planners for Greenville County Schools have identified 72 children in the neighborhoods around the school who will be assigned to the school – out of up to 320 tiny desks to fill.

“We’re going to develop a marketing plan,” said Margaret Thomason, who will be leaving her post at Crestview to take over Whittenberg in a few weeks.

The school rising on Academy Street in downtown Greenville’s west side is opening in fall 2010 for students in four-year-old Kindergarten through second grade. Each fall after that, another grade will be added through the fifth – for a total of 600 students once full.

Families whose children attend overcrowded schools in the county’s Golden Strip area, students at Mauldin, Bethel, Bells Crossing, Oakview and Woodland will have first dibs at the open spots at Whittenberg. Thomason said she foresees paying visits with families at those schools.

The advantages to Whittenberg are numerous – it has been designed from the ground up as an engineering school with labs and interactive project space built into the school. It also shares a campus with the planned Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center – which will have a pool, tennis courts and space for after-school daycare and clubs.

Professionals who commute from the suburbs to downtown everyday might also prefer to have their children at a school minutes away, said Bells Crossing Principal Barbara Barlow. Barlow’s school of 1,250 children includes 75 learning in trailers parked outside.

Still, Oakview Elementary Principal Phillip Reavis said, most children and parents have a deep connection to neighborhood schools – meaning Whittenberg recruiters have some built-in challenges.

Reavis said his school is terribly overcrowded – 1,300 students learning in a school designed for 1,000 – but he’s had few students leave for magnet programs or transfer away by choice. On the other side, he said, he’s received at most 50 students transferring to Oakview from their own failing schools (an option under the federal No Child Left Behind law).

“Community schools have been affirmed nationwide despite No Child Left Behind,” Reavis said. “Families don’t care about report cards.”

But every child learns differently, and offering an array of learning environments to children sets Greenville County Schools apart, said Brenda Byrd, principal at Bethel Elementary. Bar

“It’s always good for kids to have a choice,” Barlow said, adding she’s lost about five students to magnet programs. “The goal is to offer programs to keep students here.”

The district's planning director, Betty Farley, said schools of choice like Sterling Academy typically take a few years to catch on.

Ansel Sanders, an assistant at Mauldin Middle, will develop programs at Whittenberg. Sanders lives downtown and knows several couples with small children.

“They are extremely excited about the school,” he said.

Whittenberg will be a community school to children previously scooped up from a half dozen neighborhoods in the immediate downtown area and split among as many schools (Stone, Berea, Cherrydale, Monaview, Duncan Chapel and Armstrong).