LYNN — This time last year, Amy Dunn was happily ensconced as an assistant principal at Lynn Classical when Gene Constantino announced he was retiring. The next thing she knew, she was the acting principal.
She went through the 2018-2019 school year with that word attached to her name, and it served as a nine-month audition, as it turned out. On June 23, her name got shortened to simply “principal.”
However, she starts the new school year next month with the word “underperforming” flashing like a neon sign in the night. It was among the lowest 10 percent of performing schools in the state.
But before anyone comes to the conclusion that Classical is the local personification of “The Blackboard Jungle,” Dunn urges you to hold on a second.
“There’s a lot about this school that’s wonderful,” she said. “I defy anyone to come here and conclude that there’s not a good atmosphere here. It’s a very welcoming school.”
Dunn said that there’s a very simple reason Classical has been judged by the state as underperforming. The school has seen an influx of at-risk students with issues that often transcend the traditional school setting. Absenteeism, tardiness, homelessness all factor into how some of those students perform, Dunn said. That, in turn, becomes part of the judgment of Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s new accountability system, which determines its performing status. Other aspects include the number of students in advanced curricula, the graduation rate and MCAS scores.
But don’t confuse that label with accreditation.
“We had that process done last spring, and we came out fine,” she said. “We are fully accredited.”
But while there are issues that Classical administration cannot control, there are others within the staff’s realm. And, says Dunn, “we have a smart, diligent staff that has worked hard to put a turnaround program in place.”
There are two basic areas where Dunn and the staff are working hard to improve: Math and reading. They are the two main subjects in which additional courses are being offered. One objective is to improve MCAS scores, and the other, as Dunn said, “is to better prepare our students for college, and in general, the world beyond high school.”
There will be advanced placement courses in psychology and BC calculus. But there is also a course called the “Algebra bridge,” which she hopes helps people who might not be able to retain all the knowledge they’ve obtained from their freshman Algebra 1 course.
“The curriculum is Algebra 1 and then Geometry (as a sophomore),” she said. “But at the end of the sophomore year, they have to take MCAS, where the split is half and half between the two. So what happens? They’ve forgotten everything they learned in Algebra.
“So now, they’ll take Geometry and do that Algebra bridge course. It’ll give them a better chance.”
However, what she is most excited about is the reading course the school is offering, which will expose students to a wider variety of writing, much of which appears on the MCAS tests.
“They’ll be reading authors from all over the world and writing essays,” she said.
Other aspects she believes will help students is the work Lynn schools are doing with North Shore Community College on dual enrollment. Under the latest plan, high school students taking college courses would not have to leave the building. That, she says, gives students who might not otherwise have the chance to travel to the campus in Lynn the means to take college courses.
She says other than the overarching issue of performance accountability, the biggest challenge facing the school is the number of at-risk students.
“You have at-risk kids coming into the school at the same time we have students who have gone through eight years of a Lynn Public School education,” she said. “The at-risk kids may have huge lapses in their education, and all of a sudden, there they are, freshmen at Classical. It’s a challenge.”
To that end, Dunn has begun using student ambassadors, many of them bilingual, who will help the English learners adapt to the school.
“Some of them get here and they don’t know any English,” she said. “It really helps to have some kids who can navigate the place for them.”