Redwood Elementary is now a shining beacon of what a successful school looks like.

The school was designated as a lighthouse school by FranklinCovey during an assembly at the school Thursday morning. Redwood joins Bowmar and Bovina elementary schools as the only three lighthouse schools in Mississippi and only 350 worldwide out of 3,176 Leader in Me schools.

“They started this process before I was even principal out here,” Redwood principal Buddy Wooten said. “It means a lot to them. I think it is good for the kids and the community. If you study what the lighthouse does for you, it is a culture change, it is an environment change. The effects and what we’ve shown here is higher enrollment, higher attendance, lower discipline referrals and we’ve grown from a D to a B school in the last three years.”

Redwood implemented the Leader in Me program in 2015 after being selected by the Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce.

“We needed a program that would synergize all of our resources to help kids,” Redwood lighthouse team member Wyn Pratt said. “We needed something to help discipline and academics and to help behavior, enthusiasm and attitudes. This program was a perfect fit. The kids have taken it and internalized it. They use the habits we teach and they have become leaders.”

The school was selected as a lighthouse school following a daylong evaluation by FranklinCovey representative earlier this year. The representative did a school tour, interviewed members of the leadership team and evaluated specific classes. Wooten likened it to an accreditation evaluation.

“Generally it takes schools three to five years to become lighthouse schools and it has taken Redwood about that long,” FranklinCovey Leader in Me coach Lonnie Moore said. “We have been working to establish what is excellent, what is greatness within a school. It means a school has hit a certain level in the effectiveness of this model. They are just great. They are hitting on all levels of three areas — leadership, culture and academics.”

Schools earn lighthouse status when they are deemed to be excellent by the evaluators for the way the program has been implemented at the school and the impact it has had on the culture.

“It is amazing because we have people coming from all over the state,” Vicksburg Warren School District superintendent Chad Shealy said. “It makes Vicksburg marketable and those things are wonderful, but quite frankly the thing it does most for us is it gives students the ability to set goals and to be leaders. It transforms not only them individually, but our entire school system, our entire community and I think it is wonderful we get to join just a handful of people all across the world.”

The designation of Redwood as a lighthouse school continues VWSD’s successful implementation of Leader in Me. The district will host a Leader in Me symposium for the third consecutive year March 1-2 to enable other districts from throughout the country to come in and tour local schools and learn about the program.

“It is pretty significant that an initiative that we have undertaken is working,” VWSD board president Bryan Pratt said. “If you look at the data and the buy in from the teachers and the students, it is really substantial to see the seven habits work in these children’s lives. Everyone is coming to see us from across the state and the nation. We are doing great things in our district and the programs like Leader in Me are being recognized. It is one of the tools that is in our toolbox. It is not one thing fixes all of our challenges.”