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Beaufort County Schools is no longer a low performing school district, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI). 

NCDPI gives school districts report cards as a measure of student performance, academic growth, school and student characteristics and more. The data in report cards reflect how well a school and its students performed the previous academic year. Schools are scored on a 15-point scale and those points are translated into a letter grade. 

Report cards help school districts track student progress or regression from year to year. 

For NCDPI to deem a school district low performing, more than 50% of its schools have to have either a D or F and have a growth status of either met or not met. 

Beaufort County Schools was listed as a low performing district for the 2022 and 2023 school years, because seven out of 12 schools with a qualifying score had a D score. This year, however, two schools improved by one letter grade which pushed the district out of a low performance status. 

Superintendent of Beaufort County Schools, Dr. Matthew Cheeseman was hired in December of 2018. In January of 2019, the district had three low performing schools – Northeast Elementary, P.S. Jones Middle and S. W. Snowden Elementary. By September of 2019, all three schools improved from D to C grades. 

“As we were walking into COVID, we had such incredible momentum. We were pretty excited about where we were going,” Cheeseman said. 

Starting the 2020 school year, seven schools were considered “alert schools.” These schools had Cs, but were at risk of dropping to D which they did according to report cards from 2022. 

(NCDPI temporarily suspended report cards in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID -19 pandemic.)

The schools were: Chocowinity Middle School, Northeast Elementary, John Cotten Tayloe Elementary, John Small Elementary, P.S. Jones Middle, S.W. Snowden Elementary and Washington High School. 

Last year, those schools maintained D grades. 

This year is different, because Chocowinity Middle School and Northeast Elementary improved by one letter grade and now have Cs. Chocowinity Middle increased their performance score by seven points, jumping from 53 to a 60. Northeast Elementary increased their score by two points from a 53 to a 55, according to data provided by Beaufort County Schools. 

As for John Cotten Tayloe, they retained a D grade, but increased their score by seven points from 45 to 52. This means they are within range to change their score to a C for next year’s report card. 

John Small Elementary also retained a D grade, but increased their score by two points to a 45. P.S. Jones is similar to John Cotten Tayloe in that while they increased their score by seven points, they also kept a D grade with a 49, according to data provided by Beaufort County Schools. 

S.W. Snowden retained a D grade, but increased their score by three points to a 47. They have increased their score by seven points over the last two years. Washington High School decreased by three points to a 51, and maintained a D grade. 

As for other schools in the district,  Bath Elementary School improved their score by 4 points but maintained a B grade. Chocowinity Primary and Early College High School maintained As from last year. Northside High School maintained a C but increased their score by one point. Northside is within range to improve their grade from C to a B. Southside High School maintained a C but decreased their score by one point to a 67. They are also within range to improve their score from C to B. 

(12 schools receive report cards, because Southside High School assumes data from Beaufort County Educational Technical Center. Also, Eastern Elementary does not have a tested grade level, but it feeds into John Cotten Tayloe. John Cotten Tayloe’s scores are not a reflection of Eastern Elementary.)

Like all superintendents, Cheeseman wants to see every Beaufort County school achieve either an A, B or C. He believes all Beaufort County schools can have at least a C in the next three years. 

Local schools have improvement plans that divide students into subgroups and show the accomplishments and failings of each subgroup in various categories. Cheeseman, the Beaufort County Board of Education, administrators and staff review improvement plans. They collaborate to determine which students need more attention and assistance. 

“We really make sure that we’re taking the information of whatever the letter grade is what the score is, truly peeling that onion back to say, ‘okay, what does this mean for an individual student, where is the student, what was their success, what were their barriers and with any success – how do we replicate that and with any barriers – how do we knock those down to make the child successful,” Cheeseman explained. 

Cheeseman has set a goal for every school to increase their performance scores by three to four points every year. 

“After three to four years, you should hop a grade level. We ask the [Board of Education] to be very patient with that, because it’s ultimately the child. It’s their learning pace. It’s not how much information you can put on top of them. It’s how much skill set that they can acquire in order to master the content,” Cheeseman said. 

“I honestly believe if you’re living in the A-C range, then you are truly getting an exceptional education,” he said. 

The COVID-19 pandemic showed Cheeseman and Beaufort County Schools how easily a school can drop to a low performing status. While the district is celebrating coming out of a low performance status, the worry it could be there again remains. 

Northeast Elementary, for example, has the lowest possible score for a C. If they decrease their performance score by the smallest amount, they could go back to a D.  

“Even if they slid 0.6 points, they’re out. They’re back to a D,” Cheeseman said. “So it’s an accomplishment right now, but clearly a lot of work still has to be done.”

In addition to making sure “alert schools” do not regress into lower performance scores, other challenges Beaufort County Schools face are hiring high quality professional educators and doing more with less funding from federal, state and local governments. 

“If you cannot put a high quality professional educator in front of a child then you are limiting what’s happening inside a classroom,” Cheeseman said. “That doesn’t mean that if I put a teacher assistant in a room, they’re not going to give it their best. They will, but nothing beats a professionally trained educator. 

He continued to explain the cost to educate a child is increasing, but the resources available to Beaufort County Schools are not. Too, the population of Beaufort County is smaller than a lot of North Carolina counties which means the number of students who could enroll in the school district is lower. 

Public school districts receive funding based on the number of students enrolled. 

“We’re funded on the total number of children. But the cost of each child is going up, but you’re lowering my funding, because I don’t have enough kids. That’s what we’re really struggling with,” Cheeseman said.