The campus of any educational establishment is a little “society” with its issues that every campus member has to deal with. The campus of Felix Cook Junior Elementary in Houston, Texas is not an exception. This paper presents an analysis of the top 5 issues observed nowadays on the campus of this educational institution. The information presented in this analysis has been obtained from the interviews with the campus principal and other leaders of students’ organizations and campus authorities.
To start with, the top 5 issues on the campus include high absentees’ rates, janitorial staff issues, professional development of campus members, decrease in TAKS scores observed over the past 2 years, and handling the needs of migrate students. It is also necessary to consider the demographics of the campus under consideration to see the reasons for the above issues. The bulk of the students are of African American (64%) and Hispanic (34%) origins, and the lack of discipline observed in their cultures might explain the first issue. So might the ratio of students to teachers on campus which amounts to 20:1.
Moreover, about 88% of the teaching staff is also of African American origin, while the rest of 12% are Hispanic people. Among the school’s students, a considerable number of people (12%) are those with Limited English Proficiency, while 60.8% are on the edge of this group according to their academic performance results. Further on, 70% of the students are economically disadvantaged people. These factors may be reasons for lack of professional development perspectives and low TAKS scores. Finally, the working experience of the campus teachers varies from 1 to 5 (70%) and 6 to 10 (20%) to 10 and more years of practice (10%) which explains issues in handling janitorial staff and migrate students.