FRANKLIN—Franklin High School student Jazzi King, 17, said she needed Standards of Learning Test help, but it was, “Just for math.”

“I just wanted to be informed on what is going on, and how to help her pass,” said Jina Battle, King’s mom.

“They helped me with test taking skills,” King added.

Principal Travis Felts said the main purpose of the event was to partner up with parents and students.

“We’re trying to build a partnership with the community,” he said. “We want parents help in helping students graduate from high school. And we also want to get the test scores up so that we can achieve full accreditation.”

Erica Smith-Ingram was one of the faculty there, as part of both the math and science team.

“I love helping kids out,” she said. “Giving kids extra one-on-one attention increases their seat time, which helps them in grasping the material.

“This testing is high stress. Instead of a day-by-day of the student, it’s a snapshot of a student on one day, which I do not think is fair. But it is what we have, and we are working to help our students succeed.”

Sylvia Burns brought her great grandson Anthony Banks, 15, who needed help in math.

“He needs help, and the teachers only have so much time with him,” she said. “I feel like anything we can do to encourage him is important.”

Coming from Wisconsin, Brenda Peterson and her daughter Jylian, 16, weren’t entirely sure what an SOL test was. Jylian needed help in algebra, having previously taken the class in Wisconsin, and she found it different here.

“We just needed more information on the tests, so we could better prepare her,” Brenda said. “So far I feel like they’ve been helpful tonight.”

Felts encouraged the parents to attend other extra curricular activities, such as the retake tutoring, and tutoring in math, science, English and history.

He also mentioned that there were Saturday academies, including one on writing, and two more on the general tests, from 8 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. on March 15 for the writing and VSEP, and April 5 and 12 for the Saturday Academy.

He was even willing to provide a special incentive for retakers who attend all tutorial sessions between March 4 and April 15, attend the Saturday Academies and pass their SOL tests.

“We will take you to lunch and let you spend a day at the bowling alley,” he said. “I hope we are able to fill that bowling alley up.”

Also, Felts added, any student who is a term grad and attends retake tutorials/SOL academies will be eligible for additional retake attempts.

There were not as many present as Felts would have liked, but Jazzi King didn’t mind.

“It’s a shame more people didn’t come,” she said. “But I’m not really concerned about them, I just want to make sure one person passes — me.”