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Local News

March 10, 2009

Grandview is Stephens County’s ‘little secret’

Small school can give students more help

Jayne Boykin

Great things are happening at Grandview School, and Principal Gary Wade couldn’t be happier.

“We have a great bunch of students and a great bunch of teachers, and it’s showing in our test scores,” Wade said.

From 2007 to 2008, reading and math scores for students in the fifth through eighth grades jumped an unprecedented 200 points.

The overall Academic Performance Index (API) for the school was 1,217 points in 2007 and 1,416 in 2008, Wade said.

“In reading, we went from 1,247 points in 2007 to 1,497 points in 2008. In math, the scores jumped from 1,204 in 2007 to 1,424 in 2008. Those are the highest scores in Stephens, Jefferson and Cotton counties.

“We have two wonderful teachers teaching about 40 students in those four grades. Debbie Shelley taught the fifth- and sixth-graders, and Colby Turner had the seventh- and eighth-graders, and they did a great job. We want to thank them for the fantastic job they did working with the students last year and, hopefully, we can do it again this year.

“We’re proud of our students, too. We couldn’t do it without them, of course,” he said.

The students participate in a Scholastic Reader program, earning points for each book they read. Good scores earn the classes Reading Reward days, during which the students get to watch movies or play video games.

One year, the students were rewarded with a trip to Frontier City for their efforts.

Grandview is Stephens County’s “little secret,” Wade said.

The school is the only elementary district in the county, serving around 160 students in grades one through eight with a staff of 10 teachers. Grandview School is five miles west of Comanche and one mile south, Wade noted. Enrollment hit 169 last year.

“We draw students from Duncan, Waurika, Comanche, and even as far away as Terral. Parents love for their kids to go to school here because it’s a small school and our teachers have more one-on-one instruction time for the students. Students go to school here because they want to go to school here, then they can go back to Duncan or Waurika or Comanche and do very well in the higher grades. Many parents who graduated from Grandview bring their kids back to school here. It’s kind of a tradition with some of them,” Wade said.

Even when gasoline prices skyrocketed, parents were willing to transport their students to Grandview to get the extra help, he said.

“When gas prices went so high, some parents resorted to meeting the buses on the edge of the district so they could cut down on their costs. We had to add a bus to meet the need. It was a good problem, but it was an expense to us for the bus and the diesel. Thankfully, diesel prices have gone down some. We want to be there for our students,” Wade said.

Stephens County schools are happy to give transfers to students to attend Grandview, he said.

“We’ve always had a kind of gentlemen’s agreement with them. They had an open transfer policy before there was such a thing. We’ve never had a request for a transfer from Stephens County denied. Cotton County, too, has no problem,”

Waurika allows transfers on a case-by-case basis, he said.

If parents want to transfer a student to Grandview, they can call the school at 580-439-2467 for information on how to proceed.

A recent addition to the school is a computer lab with 25 wireless laptop computers, made possible by a $25,000 grant from the Oklahoma Department of Education, Wade said.

“They also gave us a server in case we need backup. We’ve always had computers — five or six stations in the classrooms for the higher grades — but with the new computer lab, students can work on math at their own pace, and it shows in their grades. Having good students and good teachers and the computers to work with brings up the averages in all areas, and the kids are enjoying it, too,” Wade said.

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