SU VALLEY: The little school that could

TALKEETNA — Social and economic pressures can make educating a community’s children challenging enough under the best of circumstances. So when disaster strikes a school, maintaining a focus on education can be difficult.

Just ask the staff and students at Su Valley Jr./Sr. High School, who spent a year and a half on a campus of portable buildings at the local senior center after their school burned in June 2007. From the ashes rose a new school and, less that a semester removed from moving into their new building, there’s evidence Su Valley did more than survive the fire — it thrived.

The school has been named among the nation’s top 8 percent of top-performing institutions by U.S. News & World Report. The publication and School Evaluation Services examined 21,786 high schools in 48 states and the District of Columbia and chose Su Valley as one of 1,750 “for considerably outperforming their state’s standards,” according to a report on its website.

Su Valley was named a Bronze Medal award-winner, a recognition Principal Rob Picou said is welcome and unexpected.

“It was as much a surprise to me as it was to everyone else,” he said. “I didn’t even know we were up for it.”

The criteria for the award included determining that the school’s students perform better than state averages and that less-advantaged students fare better than average when compared to their peers across the state.

That Su Valley has been able to accomplish a high level of education while dealing with the challenges created by the fire is a testament to staff and students, Picou said.

“The kids really rose to the challenge,” he said. “This whole process of getting a new school built was quite a coordinated effort between the (Mat-Su) Borough, the contractor and the community.”

But the real stars have been the teachers, he said.

“You can’t say enough about the teachers. They really pulled it off with their positive energy. They conducted business in the portables, then moved to the new facility. It’s been pretty phenomenal.”

Although he’s impressed with the results, Picou said Su Valley’s success isn’t an accident. When portable buildings were moved in to temporarily house students, staff focused on not allowing other distractions to affect classroom learning.

“I have to attribute that to the teachers,” he said. “They just came in every day and did what they needed to do and kept the kids focused on learning. That became our primary objective. They came in every day, conducted themselves in a professional manner and decided that even though we’re in portables, we’re not going to let the learning of the students to suffer.”

That was by design, said Sandra Yocom, a business teacher and yearbook adviser for Su Valley.

“That was, and is, our No. 1 mission, and everybody agrees and recognizes that as our priority and that everything else takes a back seat to that,” she said. “We had to do a lot of improvising and we had to be flexible.”

That didn’t mean there weren’t other ways to suffer. The staff and the 170 to 180 students at the school had to share a single bathroom, Picou said.

“In the portable system, it was difficult to maintain an enthusiastic school culture,” he said. “But, it felt like home, because that’s all we had. … But on all kinds of levels it was certainly an endurance test.”

That the school population has traditionally been small also helps keep education standards high, the principal said.

The U.S. News & World Report award “says a couple things about us,” Picou said. “Primarily, it says a lot about the need to have smaller schools that focus more on the individual needs of students. I think some of our larger schools are at a disadvantage in that light. At a smaller school, you can build more relationships with kids. I definitely think this speaks to the validity of small schools.”

Su Valley wasn’t eligible to earn silver or gold recognition on the list because it doesn’t offer Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs. Testing for these programs is used to measure college readiness. The report’s top school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., offers classes on DNA science, neurobiology and quantum physics.

Moving forward, Su Valley has a new school and its same resolve, Picou said.

“The same challenges that have always been there are there. We need to keep building on what I like to call the three ‘Rs’ of education— relevance, relationships and rigor,” he said. “Keep school academically challenging and get involved with kids, building relationships with students, then making the learning relevant to the lives of students so it’s not boring for kids.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.