Community

Woodland Hills School District sees incidents down, graduation rates up

NEW PITTSBURGH COURIER — In 2017 and 2018, the Woodland Hills School District was frequently in the news—mostly for the wrong reasons. This year, things are a little different—and Superintendent James Harris likes it that way.

Published

7 years ago

July 5, 2019

Courier Editor

By Christian Morrow

In 2017 and 2018, the Woodland Hills School District was frequently in the news—mostly for the wrong reasons. This year, things are a little different—and Superintendent James Harris likes it that way.

“Oh we’re still in the news, but it’s for good stuff,” he told the New Pittsburgh Courier in a June 10 interview. “I had a visit from the juvenile probation officer the other day, and he says, ‘What’s going on over here? We haven’t referred anyone from Woodland Hills to probation this year.’ He told me the officer they had specifically assigned to the school has been reassigned.”

It would be argued that Harris—who was hired in August after a civil rights lawsuit against the district saw the exit of the previous superintendent, the high school principal and the school board president—is responsible for the positive changes. While he won’t argue that, he does credit staff, new High School Principal Phillip K. Woods, new Assistant Principal Eric Graf, parents, teachers and partners for buying into the creation of a new culture of respect.

“It really is about respect for everyone. With the culture prior to our coming here, there wasn’t respect given to anyone,” said Harris. “Since all three of us were new, we just treated everyone that way automatically. The culture is now more student-centric, and we’re listening to families.”

The result: write-ups for discipline are down 75 percent at the high school and 50 percent at the intermediate school.

“Our graduation rate is up to 95 percent, that’s up from 85.8 percent last year. There have been no expulsions, we are closing the ‘alternative school,’ and the police haven’t been called here once,” he said.

Harris added that the high school’s Black Student Union has reduced tensions by giving students a voice and revealing the root causes of some behaviors that allowed resources to be allocated to address them.

Academically, challenges remain, Harris said, but two major ones have already been addressed and are yielding results.

“When we got here we found several gaps. The first was social promotions—kids were being passed without meeting course requirements—so we stopped that,” he said. “Then there was the school calendar. If you were a sophomore and failed a math class, there was no way for you to recoup that. Students knew they couldn’t graduate and dropped out. It was set up for students to fail. Now, we have a schedule that allows a student to double up or take credit recovery in the summer.”

In October, Harris said Woods showed him a list of students who were in danger of not graduating, and the two administrators went to work.

“We went to them. We were proactive—we brought them ‘kicking and screaming’ down to the lab, but it worked,” he said. “And last week, there were kids with smiling faces on that graduation stage who wouldn’t have been before, because they thought people had given up on them.”

The district is also moving the seventh- and eighth-graders out of the high school back to the intermediate school and giving it a STEAM focus. Harris said the bulk of the past disciplinary problems at the high school were related to the immaturity of those seventh- and eighth-grade students in a high school setting. The district will also introduce foreign languages in the elementary schools.

“All in all, So far so good,” Harris said. “We’re shocked at how many resources were actually available here. So we’re happy about that and about how responsive people have been—teachers, the union, parents, everyone. We didn’t do it by ourselves.”

Like us at https://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Pittsburgh-Courier/143866755628836?ref=hl

Follow @NewPghCourier on Twitter https://twitter.com/NewPghCourier

This article originally appeared in the New Pittsburgh Courier.

Courier Editor

Posts by Courier Editor

Up Next

Spirit of King plaque rededicated, with tree planting

Don't Miss

Black Lives Matter Co-Founder and Black Futures Lab Release Second Black Census Report

Courier Editor

Click to comment

#NNPA BlackPress

Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

1 week ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of February 25 – March 3, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 25 – March 3, 2026

Published

1 week ago

March 1, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

2 weeks ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke