The Petal School District continues to excel throughout Mississippi and the country, with Petal High School – the district’s flagship school – recently being honored as a 2022 National Blue Ribbon School by the United States Department of Education.
The award, which annually recognizes exemplary public and non-public school, is given based on standards of excellence as evidenced by student achievement measures. The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program is supported through an ongoing collaboration with the National Association of Elementary School Principals, Association for Middle Level Education and the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
“Obviously, we’re very excited to be recognized at the national level with this Blue Ribbon award,” district superintendent Matt Dillon said. “It’s a very distinguished award; only 297 schools across the nation get this distinction, so it’s very special.
“It’s a proud moment for our faculty, staff, student body, support staff and the community as a whole.”
The department of education recognizes all schools in one of two performance categories, based on student scores, subgroup student scores and graduation rates. Those categories are:
- Exemplary High-Performing Schools, which are among their state’s highest-performing schools as measured by state assessments or nationally-normed tests;
- Exemplary Achievement Gap-Closing Schools, which are among their state’s highest-performing schools in closing achievement gaps between a school’s student groups and all students.
Of those two categories, Petal High School was recognized as an Exemplary High-Performing School.
“(The department of education) is looking at accountability results; they look at how you grow certain subgroups of students, so we’re very proud of that,” Dillon said. “We’ve had it twice in our history – we had it also back in 2007 at Petal High School as well, and this award program has only been in existence for about 40 years.
“So I’m proud of it – I’m proud of our faculty, staff and everyone. It’s just something for us to continue to build upon academically.”
For Dillon, winning the award for a second time reinforces the school district’s focus of being not just “Mississippi Great,” but being nationally competitive as well.
“We want to give our students every opportunity to be recognized and have all the different things that other students do across the nation, so this is another representation of us being recognized on the national stage,” he said. “I think it builds momentum – I think you get to enjoy this, you get to take it in, but also it allows you to build on the rich tradition of academic excellence that we have in this district that makes us so special.
“We’re just so proud of all the people that made this happen at all of campuses. It’s a reflection of not only just Petal High School, but all the foundational skills (students) are getting in every one of the other schools leading up to Petal High School. So this was a district celebration, and I think it just speaks to the hard work of our people, and our students buying into what we do, and our parents supporting us and our community being right there behind us in everything we do.”
The National Blue Ribbon Schools Award was instituted in 1982 By Secretary of Education Terrel Bell to bring recognize those schools and students across the nation excelled in certain categories. Although at first the program honored just secondary schools, it was later expanded to include primary schools as well.
Since the program’s inception, more than 9,000 schools have been honored as National Blue Ribbon Schools.
