Interview #1: Principal Eid Mansour
Principal Eid is the current principle of Clay High. Before accepting the position, he was a well-known, highly valued teacher at John Adams High school. His interview provided valuable insight about the culture and positive message that Clay is trying to achieve. He provided knowledge about the formal process of enrolling in school, as well as the tactics that Clay is allowed to use to attract students. He provided insight about the struggle to reach out of district students because there are restrictions on the contact the Clay can have. They can market to Clay Middle School and Brown because they are their feeder schools, but cannot advertise to other middle schools unless it is strictly about the Magnet program. They sent a group of teachers to the middle schools to do so, but there are strict guidelines on what can/cannot be talked about. This has shown to have some positive results, as magnet numbers for next year went up from 85 to 100, but it falls short of the ideal magnet enrollment of 150.
The school tried to host an orientation day where they invited all 8th graders to come to the school to see what being a student at Clay High School was all about. They would go through a mock class schedule, eat in the cafeteria, provide free pizza and transportation (which they had sponsors for), and have informational sessions, but they were not allowed to do so because it may interrupt the flow of the instructional calendar. Clay can only really market themselves within the boundaries of their own walls. They make efforts to host events such as concerts, plays, and sporting events to attract people to see their facilities, experience their environment, and interact with some of their staff. They constantly try to make improvements like the new gym they put in and new large flat screens scheduled to be installed soon.
Principal Eid also mentions an issue between Advance Placement testing and the International Baccalaureate program that Clay has. There is an argument about whether or not the IB program is achieving the same results as AP. Many people aren’t valuing IB testing as much as AP because they believe that it is more prescriptive and boxes teachers in forcing them to teach things that most students don’t need. AP exams are given more college credit that the IB tests. Principal Eid also talked about an effort to get South Bend to pay for IB testing for students because they currently only pay for AP.