Under the guidance of principal Ryan Cumback, West Ashley High School continues to make big strides
by Lorne Chambers | editor
Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, distance learning placed a strain on parents, teachers, and students. Drops in nearly every major aspect of learning were reported across the country. But not at West Ashley High School. Under the guidance of fourth-year principal Ryan Cumback, the Wildcats emerged from that dark cloud and quickly regained the momentum it had built before the world shut down for the better part of two years. No small feat, especially for a school that has struggled with its public perception over the years. But as Bob Dylan said, “The Times They Are a-Changin.’”
“I’m super proud of not only getting through these last couple years, but we have seen increases in every measurable area,” says Cumback from his office just days before adjourning for winter break. “The only areas our numbers are going down on are behavior. We are not perfect but definitely heading in the right direction.”
With a new year upon us, Cumback has big plans for WAHS’s future. But first, it’s important to look back and see how far it has come in just a short period of time. When he took the reins at WAHS at the beginning of the 2019 school year, Cumback says there were three areas he really wanted to focus on. Those three areas remain priorities heading into 2023.
Number one was behavior. Whether justly or unjustly, and thanks to some well publicized disturbances, WAHS had gained a reputation as a school with some glaring behavioral problems. Many parents feared it could disrupt the learning process and opted to send their kids elsewhere for high school.
Cumback made it his personal mission to create an atmosphere at WAHS that it would be a school that parents could be proud to send their sons and daughters and feel good that they were safe and getting the best education possible.
“It’s really about trying to narrow in on that five percent of the student body who is making life difficult. Zoning in on them and providing them with the extra help they might need,” he says. That begins with getting the parents more involved, says Cumback. The school has created a social support team and added several full-time positions to deal with this directly, including two intervention teachers, who work one-on-one with students experiencing difficulties in the classroom, a Parent Advocate, a Parent Liaison, and a graduation coach, who works specifically with students behind in grade level.
“Their whole goal is to try and bring the parents in and make a connection with the school other than just coming in for disciplinary reasons, parent-teacher conferences, or when their kid is in trouble.”
While rooting out the behavioral issues was job one for Cumback, he says the second area of focus for him was increasing the academic offerings at WAHS and increasing academic opportunities across the board.
“I think parents used to feel like they had to send their kids to Academic Magnet or put them in a private school in order to prepare them for college,” says Cumback. “But we now have over 50 advanced placement and dual-enrollment courses, which is far more than any else in the district, and offering 60-plus college credit courses.” All students also have access to the West Ashley Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), a state-of-the-art facility built right on the WAHS campus, that houses several Career and Technology Education (CTE) programs, including engineering, welding, automotive technology, mechatronics, health science, media technology, cyber security, biomedical sciences, and much more.
“We have a brand new partnership with College of Charleston, the only in the district. In addition to the partnership we already have with Trident Tech,” says Cumback, so students are can gain college credit and experience before they even graduation high school.
Also aiding in the effort to attract students from the West Ashley community has been a rise in the school’s athletic programs. With two-time state champion head coach Donnie Kiefer at the helm, the Wildcat football team is finally competitive, going 7-4 this year, winning its first seven games of the season and making the playoffs. But Cumback says beyond the high-profile sports like football and basketball, it’s the rise in the so-called “country club sports,” like golf, tennis, and swimming, that reflect parents, who used to send their kids to private schools, are now starting to reconsider WAHS. He says for the first time this year they have more wrestlers than they have singlets to wear. So the athletic department has had to order more.
Since he’s taken over as principal at the school, Cumback says WAHS has added 321 students with plenty of room to grow more. With the increase in student body, there must also be an increase in staff, which brings us to Cumback’s third priority since arriving at the school. After behavior and increasing academic offerings, Cumback says the third area of focus has been teacher support
Since arriving on campus in 2019, WAHS has added a total of 15 additional teachers to its staff. Not an easy task during a time when many are fleeing from the teaching profession in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. But Cumback says that is why it is more important than ever to offer a strong support system for teachers. He says that one good thing that came out of the pandemic is that parents have a whole new respect for the job teachers do and the challenges they face in the classroom.
“We have to make sure our staff continues to feel supported and feel like they belong somewhere. All these bigger aspirations and goals can only happen if I have people in the building who can make it happen,” says Cumback. Currently, 50 percent of the people in the building are teachers and staff that he has hired since taking over as principal in 2019.
Looking forward to the new year, Cumback says there are some exciting things on the horizon. One of the biggest things is WAHS has plans to totally and completely revamp its bell schedule and move to a “Flex-mod” schedule, which is more like college schedule. WAHS would be the first in the district to implement this structure.
“We’ve been talking to schools across the country, and we feel this is the thing we need to take us to the next level,” says Cumback, who hopes to fully integrate the new bell schedule by the start of the next school year in August. He also says that with this change, every student will have a teacher who will serve as an “advisor” who will work with them over the course of two years and who will be trained in guiding them in their academic journey.
With all the changes taking place at WAHS, Cumback continues to encourage parents and members of the West Ashley community to get involved with the school. “We have to have an understanding that all schools go through cycles and not thinking that West Ashley has always been this or will always be this, but that we’re constantly reforming and reinviting ourselves. Contiunue to stuppoort. Continue to ask questions. Come in for tours, come in and see all these things we’re doing,” he says. “We should be proud to be in a community where we have one high school.”
