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C. DAN JOYNER’S LEGACY SPANS HALF A CENTURY
GREENVILLEJOURNAL
GREENVILLEJOURNAL.COM • Friday, October 10, 2014 • Vol.16, No.40
Officials work to keep middle schoolers from disengaging CINDY LANDRUM | STAFF
clandrum@communityjournals.com
WHY IS THIS DESK EMPTY? WE HAVE EXCITING NEWS. SEE WHAT’S TAKING SHAPE AT GSP. To learn more about WINGSPAN, visit elevatingtheupstate.com.
Empty desks are a familiar sight at Tanglewood Middle School – and teachers know the faces they greet each day in a good number of other seats now will be different come spring. “We often times see kids leaving this time of year,” said Tanglewood Middle Principal William Price. About one-quarter of the students enrolled at the school on the eighth day of this school year won’t be there on the last day next spring. “Some probably will be back after Christmas or in the spring. Some won’t,” he said. Changing schools is nothing new for middle school students on Greenville’s Westside. In fact, the mobility of students and their families is so great in the corridor straddling White Horse Road from Berea to Gantt that educators have dubbed it the “White Horse Shuffle.” The moves often coincide with when the rent is due. But changing schools is just one of the problems students in that corridor face. Poverty. Unmet health needs. Lack of academic success. With the odds stacked against them, many students disengage from school, effectively starting the dropping out process in middle school. Those students will be the target of a new early warning and response system expected to crank up next fall, thanks to a three-year, $3 million grant SHUFFLE continued on PAGE 8