When Ballard Elementary Co-Principal Robin Hadrick received some exciting news from the Michigan Department of Education, she could hardly wait to announce the news over the PA system for the whole school to hear.
As of Friday, Ballard joined 216 other Michigan schools in completing the exit requirements to be pulled off the Focus Schools list.
The school was placed on the Focus Schools list in the 2013 to 2014 school year because it was marked as one of the 10 percent of Michigan schools with the widest achievement gap between high- and low-performing students, the data for which was gathered through the MEAP test.
“This is just a huge testament to the hard work of all of our teachers, students, staff and administration,” Hadrick said. “[We] worked to make this school one of the best in the area.”
Since then, the school has made not only changes to the classrooms, but garnered support from the community to achieve academic success.
Hadrick said that removal from the Focus Schools list means that these changes have helped the school close the gap in achievement between the top performing 30 percent and bottom performing 30 percent.
Inside the classroom, staff sought to undergo a total intervention. Intervention programs utilized Title 1 funding to have a instructional assistant work with students, in addition to their regular lesson. The goal Hadrick said was to both challenge the students who were excelling and provide more individualized attention to students who needed the extra support.
“The idea that you can teach all the classrooms the same way and get the same growth is not realistic,” Hadrick said.
Students also spent time outside of class working with a teacher’s aide one-on-one.
During the summer, Ballard offered a summer school program to help students catch up.
The school also took an online approach, offering students classes in reading and math.
To better prepare students for the statewide tests that gather data for these rankings, Hadrick said they started testing students every semester to gauge what they needed to work on before students took the test.
Ballard also qualifies as a Title 1 school, with more than 60 percent of students on free and reduced lunch, which outside of Benton Harbor is the second highest population of students on free and reduced lunch in Berrien County. The Title 1 status means the school also received funds to help tackle some of the issues such as transportation. Hadrick said with Title 1 funds they found bussing options for students who were homeless.
Other aspects to achieving academic success took the support of the community.
Hadrick said that the school reached out to the families to assess what needs they had and how the school could help them.
One such program that has been instrumental in aiding families is the Salvation Army’s backpack food program, Hadrick said. Through the program, students who might go home to an empty fridge or pantry were provided with a backpack with enough easy-to-make meals to last through the weekend.
Other programs sought to provide students with food, clothing and even shelter.
“[It was] a whole community effort,” Hadrick said. “That is one nice thing about living in Niles. We have a community that cares and they will go above and beyond to help.”
Looking forward, Hadrick said that Ballard will not be going back to that list.
“We are going to continue,” Hadrick said. “These are systems that we are going to put into place and we will keep modifying and changing them to make sure that all our students are going to be academically successful.”
Another area school also received the good news Friday.
For Buchanan Middle School Principal Mark Kurland, the news that his school was being taken off of the Michigan Focus Schools list was fantastic to hear.
“We celebrated with an entire luncheon for the staff!” Kurland said.
After becoming a Focus School in 2014, the hard work of the students and the staff has paid off.
“First of all, we followed up with our Tier I instruction [universal efforts to promote learning for all students] and curriculum maps and pacing guides,” Kurland said. “In working with our focus mentor, we looked at re-teaching those kids that struggled.”
Buchanan Middle School, a Title I school, was assigned a District Improvement Facilitator who worked with the staff to help identify areas of the school to best help students.
“Having that person come in and show us some of the things we could change really helped,” Kurland said.
Kurland said that the monitoring will not stop just because the school is off the list.
“We are gonna keep doing some of the things we have been doing [to help struggling students],” he said. “[We are going to keep] monitoring the bottom 30 and the response to intervention [for each student].”

By JOE KUHARIC & KELSEY HAMMON