By Dorren Klausnitzer
Nashville Tennessean
Monday, 12/27/04

     Pelham Elementary is a small school. It's so small, the principal is also a teacher; so is the secretary. And every teacher teaches more than one grade at a time.

      The red brick Grundy County school has eight classrooms, seven teachers and 98 students in grades K-8. And while it is far from the ideal situation, Pelham Elementary makes its size work in its favor. ''There's a uniqueness there,'' said David Dickerson, superintendent of Grundy County schools.

      Small size, split classes and rural roots are excuses given by many schools as reasons for low performance. Not so with Pelham. It is a high-performing school. The school's consistently strong scores on the state's achievement exams earned it a $5,000 check signed by the commissioner of education. The check holds the place of honor in the school's trophy case and is a required stopping point for visitors.

      ''We have always made our gains scores, knock on wood,'' said Principal Lloyd Carden, rapping his knuckles on the trophy case door. But it hasn't been easy. Pelham is one of the state's smallest schools in one of the state's poorest counties. It sits in what many would call ''God's country'' — lush hills dotted with white-steepled churches. Because of its size and location, everyone — and everything — pulls double duty.

      Carden, the principal and a full-time teacher, also answers the school phone to deal with parents, stopping his history lesson long enough to take a message. Denise Meeks, the school secretary and a teacher's aide, is also the school bookkeeper. ''I'm also the school nurse and probably a bunch of other titles,'' she said. ''I'm the catch-all.''

      The school's library is the teacher's lounge, the computer lab and the meeting area. And then there are the teachers. Every teacher has a split class working with two grades in one room at the same time. ''There are a lot of negatives,'' Carden said. ''Every teacher will tell you. Every teacher would rather have one grade with 15 to 18 kids.'' But that's impossible when the largest grade has 16 students and the smallest has five. You have to double up.

      The teachers deal with it in their own way. In Mary Jo Gallagher's class, fourth-graders face one wall while the five fifth-graders face the other. Gallagher switches ''classes'' by walking from one side of the room to the other.

      Across the hall, Kathy Gilliam's six first-graders and eight second-graders sit in a circle facing her. While one grade works with the teacher, the other does book work. ''After doing this for 25 or 30 years, it's not so hard anymore,'' Gilliam said. Like the students, she's used to it. They all know the school's size is also its blessing.

      The pupil-teacher ratio is low, and the community is tight. ''We don't have the violence,'' Carden said. ''We don't have the problems of large middle schools with 500 to 1,000 students. We know all of our kids, and the positives outweigh the negatives.'' The community is so close-knit that many of the teachers now teach the children of kids they once taught.

      Those who don't are teaching alongside teachers who taught them. ''Here we know everybody's family, their mama, their cousins,'' said Meeks, who is known as Miss Denise to the children. The intimate atmosphere is just fine for sixth-grader Michael Pippin. ''I like it just the way it is. I like it small.'' Ian Woodlee, 12, wouldn't have it any other way, either. ''I'm pretty attached here,'' he said. So is Josh Miller. Pelham is the only school the eighth-grader has ever known. And he knows every square inch. ''I could walk around this school with my eyes closed,'' he said. But like his friends, he worries about ''going big time'' next year, when he and the 10 other eighth-graders go to Grundy County High — a school seven times larger than Pelham with 711 students.

      ''It's like daylight and dark,'' Carden said. ''It's a big difference.'' But Carden, who cries every year at graduation, isn't worried his students won't make it or won't remember the small red brick school they attended growing up.

      Pelham Elementary has graduates who are now doctors, politicians, farmers and teachers. And like a family, they all come home for a visit every now and again. Rewards for good marks under the state's old accountability measure, the state Department of Education rewarded schools that met standards in key areas: attendance, promotion, dropout rate and test scores.

      Pelham Elementary met those benchmarks for the 2002-03 school year and was awarded $5,000 by the state commissioner of education.

      Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, schools do not get financial rewards for strong performance, said Kim Karesh, spokeswoman for the Department of Education.

      However, Pelham has continued to do well. Last year, the school exceeded state goals for attendance and promotion and met the federal benchmarks for the percentage of students proficient in math, reading, language arts and writing.

Dorren Klausnitzer can be reached at 259-8066 or at dklausnitzer@ tennessean.com.