Tuscaloosa City Schools highlight record AP pass rate at Northridge; students and teachers receive incentive payments
Summary
The board recognized Northridge High School’s highest-ever AP exam pass rate and described incentives from the A Plus partnership, including about $32,000 in student gift cards and roughly $37,000 in teacher incentives; district leaders also outlined expansion of AP offerings and a middle-school initiative that brings AP-level instruction to younger students.
Speaker 1 announced that Northridge High School achieved the highest AP exam pass rate in the school’s history and described incentive payments through the district’s A Plus partnership. “We awarded… gift cards to our students for a total of $32,000,” Speaker 1 said, adding that teachers received approximately $37,000 in incentives for their work.
The presenter said the district is expanding AP course access. “Last year, we added AP Research, AP Seminar, AP Macroeconomics. For the upcoming school year, we’re looking to add AP African American Studies as well as AP Cybersecurity,” Speaker 1 said, and noted any student willing to take on the coursework may enroll.
Speaker 4 described how the district is translating that rigor into middle schools by providing AP-level instruction even where no AP credit is awarded. “We had 120 students meet either their growth target or benchmarked in both reading and math, and they got a $50 gift card, so that was $6,000 provided to students,” Speaker 4 said. She added that teachers attended workshops and instructional rounds and earned stipends; some teachers received “as much as 12 or $1,300 additional” through grant-related stipends, and the combined student and teacher incentives from the middle-school grant were “north of $21,000 this year.”
Speaker 4 said the middle-school component was funded by a three-year grant; the district’s portion of that grant concludes this year but officials plan to continue the partnership work using Title II funding and internal budgeting, and to send new teachers to summer trainings to sustain the model.
Board members and presenters framed the items as recognition of student and staff work. No formal board action was taken on the recognition itself; the board moved on to other agenda items after the presentations.
