PORTLAND – The principal of Riverton Elementary School, recently named one of 10 persistently lowest-performing schools in Maine, will leave her job after June amid a three-year, $3.4 million school improvement effort.

Nancy Kopack submitted a brief resignation letter on Friday, Superintendent Jim Morse said Tuesday. She is under contract to serve as principal through June 30.

Morse said he will appoint a committee to assist in the search for a new principal and he hopes to name a replacement to assume leadership of the school on outer Forest Avenue by late summer.

“There’s a lot of hard work to be done,” Morse said. “The person in that position needs to be someone who can engage the staff and the community, focus on the details and make sure the big-picture goals are accomplished.”

Morse said he wasn’t surprised that Kopack resigned and that she decided to leave for personal reasons. The city’s schools are on winter break this week, and Kopack didn’t respond to a call for comment.

Kopack resigned after her job was spared when the district accepted the school improvement grant, which was funded by the federal American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

Other Maine schools that accepted school improvement grants were required to replace principals who had been in their positions for three years or more, including Lake Region High School in Naples and Longley Elementary School in Lewiston.

Kopack became acting principal of Riverton in September 2007, and the position was made permanent in 2008. She has worked in Portland schools for more than 20 years, Morse said. She started teaching at Riverton in 1991, becoming assistant principal in 2005.

Kopack and her staff learned last March that the Maine Department of Education listed Riverton among the 10 persistently lowest-performing schools that receive federal Title I funding for disadvantaged students. Seventy-three percent of Riverton’s 420 students qualify for free or subsidized lunches, and nearly half live in homes where English isn’t the primary language.

The percentage of Riverton students who scored well on annual math and reading assessments was nearly 20 points below the state average during the three-year period targeted by federal officials.

From 2006-07 through 2008-09, an average of 59 percent of Maine students met or exceeded minimum math and reading standards, according to data provided by the state education department. At Riverton, an average of about 41 percent of students met or exceeded the standards.

Riverton’s scores showed an overall net improvement of 1.5 percentage points during that three-year period. However, the statewide median improvement rate was about 4.2 percentage points, so Riverton’s modest increase wasn’t enough to keep it off the list of struggling schools.

Riverton is using the $3.4 million grant to implement an aggressive school improvement plan that includes intensive staff development and expanded student learning opportunities.

Most of the plan, especially having writing and technology experts working directly with teachers, would be impossible within the school’s regular $1.1 million annual budget.

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:

kbouchard@pressherald.com

 

Copy the Story Link