*The school system in Hartsville, South Carolina is a study in triumph over adversity and the documentary “180 Days: Hartsville” shines a spotlight on how the low-performing school district turned itself around.
“Hopefully what people will walk away with after seeing it (documentary) is really a sense of committed community that’s come together in a number of ways to provide support for its most vulnerable kids,” said Jacquie Jones, co-director of the documentary, airing Tuesday (March 17) on PBS from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET.
Poor students by their very lot in life find it a challenge to get a quality education. A recent report from the Southern Education Foundation revealed that for the first time in 50 years most students attending public schools in the U.S. are from low-income households.
This documentary focuses on a city in the state of South Carolina which ranks 45th in the country in education. The city of Hartsville has an extremely high poverty rate.
“It’s a small community in the middle of South Carolina and like a lot of rural communities it has pretty high poverty. In the larger school district 80 percent of the kids are eligible for free and reduced lunch. In one of our schools over ninety percent of the kids are eligible for free and reduced lunch which is used as a proxy for low income. There is a high correlation between high poverty and low academic achievement,” Jones revealed.
The film is an inspiration – showing how these students in this small town of some 7 thousand residents proved something really big. You can beat the odds. These young people didn’t let poverty swallow them up but instead achieved a 92 percent graduation rate and now Hartsville is the number 3 school district of 81 districts in just four years.
When asked what she found teachable in this documentary, Jones pointed to a recently released book entitled “Our Kids” by Robert D. Putnam.
“(It) really talks about the erosion of community in our society and it really argues that the decline or the ‘decline in public schools’ really came about when we stopped thinking about all children as our children – and we really started thinking about only the children I gave birth to or I adopted as my children. I think that’s what I hope people walk away seeing that when you invest in all children – all boats rise.”
“180 Days: Hartsville” is co-produced by South Carolina ETV (SCETV) and National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC).
Listen to Tené Croom talk to Jacquie Jones, co-director of “180 Days: Hartsville”:
By: Tené Croom
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Twitter @TcTene
