School Designation

October 20, 2025

Dear Parent/Guardian,

Legislation (G.S. §115C-83.15) passed during the 2013 long session of the North Carolina General Assembly provides parents with an additional measure of school performance in the form of School Performance Grades. Beginning with the 2013–14 school year, the annual North Carolina School Report Cards display a letter grade of A, B, C, D, or F for each school in the state.

The School Performance Grades are based 80 percent on our school’s achievement score (student proficiency) and 20 percent on students’ academic growth. At Forest Hills Global Elementary School, our achievement score for the 2024-2025 school year is based on how well our students performed on the End of Grade Tests in grade 3,4, 5. We earned a C in Math and an F in Reading with an overall score of a D.

The purpose of this letter is to inform you that Forest Hills has been designated as a low performing school by the North Carolina State Board of Education. As defined in G.S. 115C-105.37: “The State Board of Education shall identify low-performing schools on an annual basis. Low-performing schools are those that earn an overall school performance grade of D or F and a school growth score of "met expected growth" or "not met expected growth" as defined by G.S. 115C-83.15.”

Forest Hills received a School Performance Grade of D and a growth designation of Met for the 2024–2025 school year. Although we are committed to improving this score, it is important to remember that just as no one single score or grade tells the whole story of a student, neither does it tell you everything about the performance of a school or the opportunities that our school provides. We provide highly qualified instructional coaches in Reading and Math as well as highly qualified tutors to provide targeted instruction in Reading and Math. We finished in the top 3% in Math growth of all the schools in North Carolina (36th out of over 1200 schools). We are also recognized by the state of North Carolina as a top 10 school for closing the achievement gap (top 10 out of over 1200 schools).

As a low performing school, we are required to develop an improvement plan that specifically addresses how the school will improve both the school performance grade and school growth score. The plan will also include how the superintendent and other central office administrators in the district will work with us and monitor the progress of our school. We are already engaged in the work of refining our plan and will present the plan to our school board at their next meeting, on October 28, 2025 at the NHCS Board of Education Meeting where the plan will be presented for approval. The final plan will be available for review on Forest Hills Global Elementary School’s website.

One of our top priorities for 2025–2026 is to improve our School Performance Grade. There are a number of key programs we have in place to help improve student performance. These include:

Highly Qualified Instructional Coach/Interventionist in Reading to provide support to teachers as well as direct instruction to targeted students
Highly Qualified Instructional Coach/Interventionist in Math to provide support to teachers as well as direct instruction to targeted students
Highly Qualified Multi-Tiered System of Support Coach/Interventionist to provide support to teachers as well as direct instruction to targeted students
Highly Qualified tutors to provide one on one/small group instruction to targeted students

We hope you will closely follow your student’s academic progress and work with his or her teacher(s) to help ensure they stay on track academically. Working together as a team, we can improve not only how well our students are performing individually, but how our school is performing as a whole. There is nothing more important to administrators and teachers at Forest Hills than ensuring students are ready for the next step in their academic careers. I look forward to working with you to make sure your student is on track for success.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding our School Performance Grade and how we plan to improve, please don’t hesitate to contact me or your child’s teacher.

Sincerely,

Diego Lehocky, Principal