KSBA Aware , the Kentucky School Boards Association’ s semi-monthly publication, features education news, legislative developments, research, member polling, advocacy efforts and the latest in KSBA programming. We welcome your feedback on its content, including the topics you would like to see covered in future issues.

In this issue:

Pendleton County Schools launches poverty focus

It’s not exactly trading places, but certified staff in Pendleton County Schools are getting an opportunity to better understand low-income students through a program that simulates poverty, a bus tour of the county and a book study.

During the simulation, staff members will be assigned a different role and family. They will receive a card detailing who their family members are, what kind of employment they have and their salary if they are employed. The simulation will take participants through a four-week span compressed into 15-minute segments with typical expenses and events to see if the staff members can get by for the month.

“Building relationships with all of our students is essential to student success,” said Laura Pugh, the district’s executive director of teaching and learning. “We want our students to believe that no matter their socioeconomic status, achievement is a reachable target and that we are here to help them experience success.”

Pendleton County administrators participated in a poverty simulation at Newport Independent and decided the program would benefit their district.

On Aug. 9, staff will take a bus tour of the county as part of the initiative. “We feel like if you work in this county, you should know the ins and outs of it,” Pugh said. She said sometimes staff get aggravated when parents don’t participate or get involved in school activities, but “I think they'll see between the poverty situation and the circumstances those families are living in and the stress they're dealing with – and then they factor in after the bus tour how far out some of our families live and if they don't have means of transportation – that running to school for a half-hour parent-teacher conference may not be feasible.”

Throughout the year, staff will do a book study of Eric Jensen’s Poor Students, Rich Teaching: Mindsets for Change. Pugh said Jensen outlines “strategies that teachers can use in their classroom to deal with some of these students who are maybe coming to school with that kind of stress on their plates and be able to relate to them better.

“Hopefully it’s going to improve the relationship between the student and the teacher, and also help those students who are living in low-income situations to be more successful in the classroom.”