Rep. Parmon to co-chair committee with Sen. Malone

House Speaker Joe Hackney has appointed eight representatives to the newly created Joint Legislative Commission on Dropout Prevention and High School Graduation.

Rep. Earline W. Parmon will co-chair the committee with Sen. Vernon Malone. The Speaker also appointed Reps. Dan Blue, Angela Bryant, William Current, Susan Fisher, Bryan Holloway, Pat Hurley and Cullie Tarleton to the committee. The Senate members are Sens. Joe Sam Queen, Charlie Dannelly, Julia Boseman, Clark Jenkins, Katie Dorsett, A.B. Swindell and Jerry Tillman.

The commission is the result of the Speaker’s initiative to help improve high school graduation rates in North Carolina. Earlier this year, Reps. Parmon and Fisher conducted a series of public hearings about dropout prevention around the state. The hearings drew educators, parents, students and community activists eager to help with the problem.

“It became increasingly apparent through our hearings that dropout prevention was a concern for parents, teachers and students in every part of our state,” Speaker Hackney said. “I believe that this is an issue the General Assembly needs to address more directly, at least in part by discovering the successful but often unheralded efforts in our communities to help students excel. This is just the first phase of our effort, though. We must continue to work on this problem in some way every year until we succeed in keeping more at-risk students in school.”

The General Assembly has also established its first Committee on Dropout Prevention. The committee is made up of 15 members appointed by the Speaker, Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight and Gov. Mike Easley. The group will determine which local school administrative units, schools, agencies and nonprofits shall receive dropout prevention grants. The General Assembly appropriated $7 million for the grants this year.

The co-chairs of the committee are Dr. David B. Strahan, a professor in Elementary and Middle Grades Education at Western Carolina University, and Patsy Ray, principal of Hope Mills Middle School in Hope Mills.

The other members are Peggy T. Vick, director of the Jack Britt High School IST Academy of Engineering in Cumberland County; Patrice A. High, an administrator at Weldon Middle School in Halifax County; Bennie Walker, a manager for Sears Roebuck and Company from Forsyth County; Arnold Dennis, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Institute at North Carolina Central University; Zoe Locklear, dean of the School of Education at the University of North Carolina-Pembroke; Lisa Daye, a counselor at McDowell County High School; Bill Farmer, vice president of corporate development for Time Warner Cable; Margaret Ellis, a member of the Vance County School Board; Shirley Prince, superintendent of Scotland County Schools; Angella Dunston, director of the Education & Law Project for the NC Justice Center; Virginia Hoover, a school social worker in Rockingham County; Harriette Davis, a math teacher at Josephine Dobbs Clement Early College High School in Durham; and Cynthia Marshall, state president of AT&T North Carolina.

The Joint Legislative Commission on Dropout Prevention and High School Graduation will evaluate the programs that receive grants and decide whether expanding or replicating them will improve graduation rates in the state.

The commission will also review research on student success, study major middle and high school reform efforts and how they may influence the dropout rate, review the courses required for graduation and determine whether changes should be made and determine which strategies best help students remain in school when they are at risk of being retained.

Additional information about the duties of the commission and the committee is contained in House Bill 1473, the 2007 budget bill.