Interview with Tracy Samilton and Sarah Hulett of Michigan Radio
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. Now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, this week we are recording onsite in Ann Arbor. We are at the studio of the Michigan Radio, your NPR News Station. Our guests today are Tracy Samilton and Sarah Hulett. Both Tracy and Sarah are reporters and producers for Michigan Radio. Starting today, and continuing through the rest of November, Tracy and Sarah and other Michigan Radio news staff, will be presenting Grading Michigan schools, a multipart series that takes an in-depth look at education in Michigan. Tracy and Sarah, thanks for joining us today.
Tracy Samilton Thanks for having us.
Rob Huisingh I know that many people are probably familiar with your voices and with your names, but maybe you could begin by telling us just a little bit about yourselves.
Tracy Samilton Sarah, you first.
Sarah Hulett We are not used to being on this side of the microphone.
Tracy Samilton That's right.
Sarah Hulett Well, I have been covering Detroit for Michigan Radio for about a-year-and-a half, and before that I was a capital correspondent. I covered the legislature for all of the public radio stations in Michigan. For this series, it's a little bit of a departure, we are doing some stuff in Detroit, but we are also trying to get to other cities that we don't normally get to. So, I have been to Benton Harbor, that's I guess the furthest that I have traveled. But, yeah, about six-and-a-half years I have been a reporter for public radio.
Tracy Samilton I have been a reporter for about ten years, all of them at Michigan Radio. I came over here for an internship and got bitten by the radio bug and could not leave. I just found the field so rewarding that I stayed. Before that I was a legal assistant for almost ten years, and it was not the best field for me, but it did set me up really well for the legal stories that I do for Michigan Radio, so it was not time wasted.
Rob Huisingh Excellent! The series itself is going to be running -- from what I understand, it's starting today and running through the rest of the month.
Tracy Samilton Yes, at least.
Sarah Hulett And maybe even...
Tracy Samilton Yeah, we are finding as we go along that this is such a large and very important topic that we are very afraid that Education Month is going to turn into Education Year here at Michigan Radio, but it has been a wonderful opportunity.
Rob Huisingh Excellent! Now, as you went through the shows then that are going to be coming out over the next month, first Tracy, was there a particular topic that you found to be most interesting, and could you talk about that?
Tracy Samilton Every story I do turns out to be the most interesting, but one that I just recently finished up, I have just found it really so optimistic to think that a school district can do what Northfield Public Schools has done. They started out with at least 10% of their students ending up in special education classes, which means it's expensive for them, and it's also not good for the students, because the labels tend to stick throughout their lives.
They changed the entire culture of the schools so that the teacher says oh, I have got this kid, they are not quite up to speed on this particular part of the lesson plan, I am not sure what to do, because I have tried everything in my bag of tricks. She calls on a special support team and they swoop in, and they do strategies to get that student up with the peers; his peers or her peers. They have reduced their special education numbers from over 10% to almost 5%, which is one of the lowest, if not the lowest, figures in the state. State Senator, Nancy Cassis, is going to encourage Intermediate School Districts across the state to take a really hard look at this, and consider implementing it at their district.
Rob Huisingh To see if it could be replicated?
Tracy Samilton Yeah.
Rob Huisingh Oh, fascinating. Sarah, how about you.
Sarah Hulett Well, I think the question was like sort of what are we tackling?
Rob Huisingh Yeah, is there a particular story that you are tackling this month that you found to be particularly the most interesting?
Sarah Hulett Well, one of the issues obviously that we had to look at is No Child Left Behind. I mentioned that I was in Benton Harbor last week. Basically for that story we were looking for a school that was in either Year 6 or Year 7 of failure to meet adequate yearly progress. That's important because the State Superintendent of Instruction, Mike Flanagan, has said recently that -- and he has been under some pressure to do this, that he wants to shut down schools that reach that phase, phase 6, because at a certain point you have to ask the question, how many chances do you give a school to turn things around?
Rob Huisingh To comply.
Sarah Hulett Yeah, I mean that was the idea behind No Child Left Behind is that we want to get all children proficient by the 20 -- I think it's the 2013 school year, correct? So, if they are obviously just way behind, what do you do? One of the things that we deal with as reporters is that not everyone in education -- there is some fear out there that the negative stories have created the situation where there are some reluctance to have a reporter come in and visit a school.
So, we went down this list of schools that were in Year 6 and 7, and we found Freddie McGee. Freddie is the Principal of Hull Middle School in Benton Harbor. He just had this -- just even over the phone we could tell that this guy's personality was just larger than life. It's a unique situation, because this is his first year on the job. It's the Superintendent's first year on the job. She came from St, Joe, across the river, to become the Superintendent of Benton Harbor Area Schools, and you have got this school that's just struggling, its numbers are way below the targets for being on that track to be proficient by 2013.
So, it was just really interesting to spend a day with him, and the people he works with. I talked to a couple of consultants, the former Assistant Principal, and someone else who had been an administrator, basically their job is to be in there and see how they are doing, to a person, custodians, consultants, the Title I reading specialist, teachers, everyone said it's a completely different school than it was last year.
So, you have got this like feel good story about the school's turnaround, and the real question is, are they going to get the chance to see it through? These are the questions that we have sort of been finding or the situations that we have been finding out there is that you have got these tremendous individuals who are trying to affect change, and they are up against some real challenges.
Rob Huisingh Yeah, the challenges in some of these urban school districts are huge. I have had many Superintendents that we have talked to that have actually said, it's pretty difficult for me to imagine myself in one of those schools being able to affect the change any better than what some of these people are doing. So, I can bet that's a good story.
Sarah Hulett And in part they are so -- I mean you look at Detroit, its just massive, its just huge. I was in the Ninth Grade Academy, there was this trend toward creating these special places for the ninth graders because it's such a critical year. There are 650 kids in the ninth grade, it's like a high school in some places.
Tracy Samilton I am doing another story on Hillsdale County Districts where their problem is they have got not that many students spread out over a huge area, they are also dealing with the problem of declining enrollment, but they are trying to figure out how to give a high quality education to students that are spread out over an entire district. All of them, the districts like that and the big districts like Grand Rapids in Detroit, are dealing with money problems, because of the state revenue situation, because of the state's economy.
Rob Huisingh Yeah, one of the stories that we're looking at doing, coming up, is looking at some of the fundamental, we will call it inequities in school funding, and that seems to be a fairly large topic in and of itself. If people want to specifically tune into to these shows, when is it that these shows will be on the air?
Sarah Hulett Well, they will be on Michigan Radio, which is 91.7 in sort of Southeast Michigan area, 91.1 in Flint, and 104.1 in Grand Rapids, during the Drive Time Show. So, they will be able to hear it during morning edition. The specific time is a little tough to pin down, generally it's the 7 o'clock hour.
Tracy Samilton Yeah, it's generally a 7:35, but we move it around depending on what we are being sent by morning edition. Then doing all things considered, generally it's either 4:45 or 5:45, and then the stories are also placed on the web. So, if you happen to be tuning in and you don't hear whatever you are waiting for, you can go on michiganradio.org and the stories will all be posted there. If you want to sit down for an hour when we are all done and listen to every single story in a row, you can do that.
Sarah Hulett They can hear the stories online, that's I think a point I would like to stress.
Tracy Samilton Yes, you can hear the stories online, that's right.
Rob Huisingh Well, I will tell you, Sarah and Tracy, I want to thank you for taking the time to be on our show. I hope that we will be able to do this again sometime. For those of our listeners, I just wanted to let you know that if you would like to contact Michigan Radio by telephone, they can be reached at (734) 764-9210, again, that number is, (734) 764-9210, or you can visit them online at www.michiganradio.org, again, that URL is www.michiganradio.org. Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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