Continuing Ed in Winston Salem Clemmons Advance 2018

By Kim Underwood

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools

AUGUST 14, 2018 – Lakeisha Hill has a heart for students who need extra support on the path to graduating from high school.

As the assistant principal at Main Street Academy, Hill has been helping middle and high school students who are working on developing the self-discipline that will enable them to return to their home school.

Now, as the Program Manager for the school system's Forsyth Academy for Continuing Education (FACE), she will be helping students in danger of not graduating to get back on track.

Hill likes helping students facing challenges to find ways to become successful, and, joining FACE, which offers evening classes at the Career Center, enables her to continue doing that in a different way.

"I like the idea of expanding the positive aspect of alternative ed," she said.

"She is the one for that job," said Ron Travis, the principal at Main Street. "She is really a wonderful person…I think she will do a great job."

Serving as the Program Manager for FACE, Hill will be working with counselors and others at traditional high schools. She has the skills to do that and take care of the other aspects of her new responsibilities, Travis said.

She is highly organized. She is intelligent. She is persistent. And she has a sense of compassion for those who may feel left out or left behind.

FACE is part of the school system's Graduation Initiative, which also includes mentoring programs sponsored by organizations in the community. Kay Landry is the Program Manager for the Graduation Initiative.

As Hill makes the transition to her new job, she has been working with Landry and with Walter Johnson, who has overseen the FACE program for the past three years. Before becoming the coordinator at FACE, Johnson had been an assistant principal at East Forsyth High for 8 years. He is leaving to become an assistant principal at Walkertown High School.

"I was ready to go back to the traditional school," Johnson said.

Landry prefers to think of students in Graduation Initiative programs as "at promise" rather than "at risk" students.

Many of the students served by the FACE program are dealing with difficult challenges, Landry said. Perhaps they have to work to help support their family. Perhaps they have a child of their own or have to take care of younger siblings.

"The key is being willing to look at each student individually," Landry said, "looking at who they are and what their circumstances are and helping them create a plan for a success."

Many FACE students attend classes both at their home high school and at FACE, which offers classes at the Career Center from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday. Students who complete the courses necessary to earn their degree graduate through their home high school.

"It's definitely a partnership," Landry said.

Along with working closely with the home school, Johnson said, meeting the needs of the students requires flexibility.

Johnson said that his experiences at FACE have given him a deeper sense of empathy and of the importance of knowing and understanding each student's story, and he looks forward to using that understanding to serve students at Walkertown.

FACE has seven teachers who teach there in addition to holding a full-time position at a school. The FACE staff also includes a counselor and an administrative assistant.

It's a strong group of people, Hill said, and she is looking forward to working with all of them.

"I am so grateful for the staff I am inheriting," she said.

Hill knows about dealing with difficult challenges, both from her work at Main Street and from her own life.

"I was the product of a teen pregnancy," Hill said.

After attending a school for pregnant teens, her mother, Sylvia Funderburk, went on to graduate from Reynolds in 1979.

Main Street is an alternative school for middle and high school students who have violated the Student Code of Conduct. The goal at Main Street, Hill said, is to help students learn to behave appropriately in an academic setting so that they can return to their home school.

So she brings a lot of experience collaborating with people at other schools to her new role.

Hill went to elementary school at Moore Elementary, when Geneva Brown was principal. Brown later became a member of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education.

For Hill, it's important to acknowledge a school's leader, and, in saying that she went to what is now Paisley IB Magnet School before going to Mount Tabor High, she made a point to mention that Ed Hanes was the principal at Paisley then and that Martha Land was principal the Mount Tabor.

Hill was a good student, and, in high school, she took honors and advanced-placement classes. She was successful, she said, in large part because of the support of her mother and of the teachers and administrators at her schools.

"I had educators who took the time to give me a chance," she said.

So she wants to offer such support to students of today.

Although Hill certainly liked to play school when she was growing up, she wasn't planning to become an educator when she went off to Winston-Salem State University.  After graduating with a major in sociology, she became a case worker with the Experiment in Self-Reliance.

Her passion for education was ignited after she left there and began teaching second grade at the Quality Education Institute.

"That's where I found my passion for education," she said. "I loved second grade. They were like sponges."

She earned her teacher certification at High Point University. She has since earned a master's degree in school administration at N.C. A&T State University and is working on her doctorate at Gardner Webb University.

After serving as the assistant principal at Forest Park Elementary, she became the assistant principal at Main Street in 2014.

While she was at Main Street, she and others established the Initiative for African-American Males (I AAM), which worked to close gaps in achievement. She is also the author of a book called The Ministry of the Three Little Pigs!

Hill is married to David Hill, who is a job coach in the EC (Exceptional Children) program at North Forsyth High. The Hills have four children. Rodrake Clark graduated from Carver High. David Jr. graduated from North Forsyth. Chauncey graduated from West Forsyth, and Destiny will be a senior at West Forsyth.

The family goes to Union Baptist Church.

Even before she was offered the new position, Hill had ideas about possibilities for strengthening and expanding FACE. For her interview for the job, she created a two-page graphic that included a list of three-year goals for the academy.

When FACE was established in 2013, it focused on helping students who had dropped out to find ways to return to school and graduate. It then expanded to include students who might be in danger of dropping out, such as students who had failed a course or courses and needed to earn that credit to get back on track to graduating.

While the focus remains on students in their senior year the program has grown to include students in grades nine through 11 who could use the support.

When Johnson became the director at FACE, it was serving about 75 students. This past school year, he said, it served about 320 students.

One of Hill's goals is to continue to expand the ways in which FACE serves students so that it can serve even more. She also wants to increase the level of awareness among students so the people it could serve will know it's there as an alternative.

She also wants to bring in people from the wider community to talk with students.

Since FACE was established, it has helped many students graduate who might not have graduated otherwise, Landry said.

"We have a history of increasing the graduation rate," she said.

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Source: https://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=1&ModuleInstanceID=12708&ViewID=6446EE88-D30C-497E-9316-3F8874B3E108&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=254345&PageID=0

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