Escambia County Public Schools has begun identifying the academic outcomes, such as reading and math scores, with their school attendance zones to reveal “corridors of concerns.”
The”corridors of concerns” came up near the end of the Trust’s meeting on Tuesday when the board was discussing a March 20 workshop to discuss future programs.
“The school district for several months now has been reviewing, some people may call it ‘pockets of poverty,’ we’re calling it ‘corridors of concern,’ said School Superintendent Keith Leonard.
“And what it does is it drills down to the number of students and what school they attend by each, not just zip code, but by school attendance zone. And it is a very focused data. You can drill down to math scores, reading scores,” he continued. “So you can imagine we’re beginning to put our focus in those particular areas and have a really smart young man that works in our IT department that has developed this. And if it would be appropriate, I would ask him to come and deliver that message along with our district data scientist.”
This is fantastic news!
Last spring, Inweekly worked with the University of West Florida Haas Center to produce the Pockets of Poverty map to identify the Escambia County neighborhoods with the largest concentration of children living in poverty.
I hope we can apply the school district’s work to the Pockets of Poverty map and later add health data to better understand the challenges facing Escambia children. That understanding should lead to the Escambia Children’s Trust deploying its $100 million budget better and having a greater, more meaningful impact.
