The superintendents of Clinton City Schools and Sampson County Schools, Dr. Wesley Johnson and Dr. Jamie King, recently took flight with another group of superintendents to Wales on a learning exchange for the 2026 North Carolina Educators Delegation supported by East Carolina University’s Rural Education Institute.
“The overall purpose of the trip was community schools,” Clinton City Schools Superintendent Dr. Wesley Johnson said. “This entire trip was put together by ECU, the Welsh government and the University of Central Florida (UCF). All expenses were covered by grants from these universities. In Wales, they call theirs community focused schools, they have a model. Our mission was to go over to Wales to study what they were doing with community schools to see if their model was creating additional change than the models being used in America. North Carolina also has a significant investment in community schools. The model really in North Carolina just started in 2024, and Buncombe, Orange, Vance and Pasquotank were the first districts in the state to adopt community schools. This year it spread to Durham, Northampton, Bertie, Washington, Hyde and Sampson County. Dr. Jaime King is utilizing a community focused schools model in the Lakewood district. I’ve actually had him come and present to my board when he shared with me what the community-focused model is.”
Johnson revealed that inside a community focused schools model, the community and the school are basically one entity.
“The school and the community are basically one,” he explained. “The schools adopt an approach to where they want to work with their community to ensure that, as we educate our students that were also education our entire citizenry and that we’re working with our adults. We’re working with our students to have better impacts and outcomes, not just with students, but with entire families. You kind of shift your mindset from an approach that is entirely student centered, even if you still are student centered, but you’re now also centered on the family and you’re centered on ensuring success and growth for the family.”
The opportunity to adopt that approach rose for Johnson, and he wasted no time applying it within the Clinton City Schools district.
“I’m sitting here right now at L.C. Kerr Elementary and we’re preparing for student registration,” Johnson said during a phone interview. “While we’re having student registration, I’m also looking at a medical bus that is on our premises (Goshen Medical). So what we’re doing is, we’re offering opportunities for our families to come here and receive vaccinations, we have a dental bus that also comes. So it’s taking an approach where it’s not just focused on education, but you’re also focused on the health and well-being of the entire family. We have lots of partnerships with our faith-based organizations, we have backpack buddies, and we have a pantry at our middle and high schools.”
Johnson also revealed more on what adopting a community focused model approach would do for Clinton City Schools.
“A lot of the principles of community schools, we already have here in Clinton City Schools,” he pointed out. “But the reason why I’m intrigued by it is because as a community-focused model, is a federal grant that is available at universities. So then the university becomes a conduit through the community, and it allows us to receive additional funding. That would allow us to have additional personnel that would be focused on getting these resources to the hands of our families. I am just so enthralled by the work that’s going on in the community schools. I think it perfectly matches what we’re trying to do here in Clinton City Schools.”
Inside of community school systems in Wales, there was something that stuck out to Johnson that he noticed.
“One big difference that I think is important to note, there is not an over reliance on testing and accountability (inside elementary schools) in the Welsh Government,” Johnson said. “They have a big test and that test comes near the end of what we would call high school. They’re taking these test to determine tracking of students through the university level, community college level and so forth. So what I did notice was it seem like there was more opportunity for what I would call experiential learning and students to learn from peers, learn from play. As we moved from schools (throughout Wales), we saw a lot of water tables, sand tables, experiments with students working with other students and learn by doing it. I think that with our current system of accountability, we get a little bogged down in ensuring that our students are prepared and ready for the next test.”
Johnson described his overall experience on the learning exchange.
“The first and foremost thing that I took away was how similar we are as people on the globe,” he said. “We want, like most people want what’s best for their families, what’s best for their community. Education and what’s being done in our schools is impacting students and families for the foreseeable future, I think that’s very important. Another thing that I learned is how the impact that a trip like this can change your mindset can change your vision. We were super, super busy, we also had so much travel that was in the different experiences and different schools. It gave me a lot of time to reflect on current practices, procedures, protocols, policies that we have here in Clinton City Schools along with my own educational vision with some things that we can maybe do a little better. In total I went with seven different superintendents all from Eastern North Carolina. We had a lot of time to reflect to talk about our goals and visions.”
Johnson also noted that the opportunity also gave him a chance to hear what the other superintendents had to share.
“It was a great opportunity to get to know some colleagues even better, hear about some wonderful things that are going on their districts,” Johnson emphasized. “Looking for ways to strengthen what we’re doing here in Clinton City Schools. I would say the entire chance to learn and grow was really fundamental for me. I’ve got so many notes that I’ve written down as I’m preparing for next year, some little tweaks that we’re going to do that I think is going to create sustaining and lasting results here in the district.”
If another learning exchange opportunity raised for the superintendents, one country in particular came to mind.
“I had no idea about this, but there is a fairly large Welsh community in Argentina,” Johnson said. “Because of that large Welsh community and because of the push for community schools, we are strongly considering Argentina. I think that they are looking at ways through grants to get this same group of educators to Argentina next year.”
He continued, “Me and the eight superintendents had this incredible opportunity educators from the other side of the pond in the United Kingdom in Wales for very little expense to the local tax base. I would jump at the opportunity to go to Argentina, right now it appears it looks like those same educators including me, we (possibly) have the opportunity next year to go to Argentina.”
As of press time, Dr. King could not be reached to give his thoughts on the learning exchange.