Contentnea-Savannah selected for multimillion, statewide Golden LEAF Initiative
By Patrick Holmes and Rebecca McGann
Contentnea-Savannah K-8 School is one of 15 middle schools in the state chosen to participate in a comprehensive five-year, $25 million statewide project to boost math instruction and career development. The Golden LEAF Schools Initiative, announced Thursday by the Golden Leaf Foundation and the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (DPI), will provide CSS and the 14 other participating schools with intensive coaching, resources and support, according to the announcement. Additionally, participating schools will receive math resources and coaching, career readiness resources and funding for travel, stipends and bonuses.
The program, which will provide $1.8 million to CSS over five years, is made possible by funding from the Golden LEAF Foundation. The State Board of Education approved selection of the 15 schools Wednesday, based on DPI’s recommendation.
“It is a tremendous honor for Contentnea-Savannah K-8 School to be one of only a few schools across North Carolina selected for the Golden LEAF Schools Initiative,” said Superintendent Brent Williams. “This grant represents a significant investment in the future of our students and teachers. It will provide additional sustained professional development and instructional support necessary to drive meaningful, long-term improvements in math achievement and overall school performance.”
Being chosen for the initiative positions CSS and the district at the forefront of statewide efforts to enhance student learning and educator support. At the heart of the program is a focused effort to improve math outcomes in middle school — a subject area where many students across the state face challenges.
“The emphasis is on middle school math because, across our state, we see that middle school math has a lot of room for improvement in terms of student outcomes,” Christel Carlyle, LCPS’s director of middle grades education, said. “We’ve seen a great shift in math instruction and what it needs to look like. This will help these teachers in approaching these new practices in mathematics.”
CSS math teachers will work with embedded coaches and a leadership team from the school will be a part of additional learning opportunities with teams from other schools in the Golden LEAF Initiative. But the individual aspects of the initiative – not dissimilar to what LCPS has done with its digital learning program – are compounded by the initiative’s five-year commitment.
“This is another level of professional learning made possible by the grant,” Carlyle said. “It’s an extensive grant that goes out over five years. Typically, you may have some professional learning that you’re able to allocate money for on a year-to-year basis, so this is knowing that you’re going to have sustained professional development over five years to impact changes – not for a short period of time but over time.”
The application process, described as “rigorous” in Thursday’s announcement, involved the LCPS team – Superintendent Brent Williams, Associate Superintendent Frances Herring, CSS principal Dr. Heather Walston and Carlyle – over over two months and culminated in a video interview with the grant’s selection committee.
“We expanded on the application in response to very specific questions,” Carlyle said of the interview. Dr. Walston called the selection “one of the highlights of my career,” adding that she and digital learning specialist Danielle Groseclose “worked on this for hours and hours and hours” because they knew “it would be a game changer for us in our middle school.”
She said securing the funding will “completely revitalize” the middle grades at CSS. “It will drastically impact their child’s education here at Contentnea-Savannah. It will overhaul our middle school and give our kids a different way to learn, a transformative way,” Walston said.
The selected schools, representing 13 counties, are divided into two cohorts: the Transformative Schools Cohort (TS) and the Personalized, Competency-Based Education Cohort (PCBE). The initiative emphasizes collaboration within each cohort, aiming to foster long-term educational improvements and workforce development across the state.
In the TS cohort, CSS will receive comprehensive support focused on improving schools through implementation of the Marzano High Reliability Schools (HRS) Framework and the Open Up Resources Problem-Based Math Curriculum.
The Marzano model relies on high-quality instruction aligned with clear learning goals and the use of ongoing assessments to meet students’ individual needs and foster a culture of growth, collaboration and innovation.
Open Up is a conceptual-based instruction program designed to make sure “middle school math students understand the concepts alongside the algorithmic practices in math, really understanding why a particular formula exits and what it stands for,” Carlyle said.
“This grant includes an emphasis on professional development for math teachers, but the High Reliability Schools framework will impact change across the middle grades and eventually foster a whole-school improvement model,” she said.
Other middle schools chosen for the program are Bertie Middle School, Bertie County Schools; Carver Middle School, Scotland County Schools; East Alexander Middle School, Alexander County Schools; East Rutherford Middle School, Rutherford County Schools; Harnett Central Middle School, Harnett County Schools; Northern Middle School, Person County Schools; Union Middle School, Sampson County Schools; Warren County Middle School, Warren County Schools; West Lee Middle School, Lee County Schools; Dunn Middle School, Harnett County Schools; Hayesville Middle School, Clay County Schools; Swain County Middle School, Swain County Schools; SanLee Middle School, Lee County Schools; and Waynesville Middle School, Haywood County Schools.
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