Brainerd High School Principal Crystal Sorrells said she can’t remember the last time her school wasn’t on the state’s priority list.
“My earliest memory of the priority list was when I came back in 2009 at Brainerd as an assistant principal,” Sorrells said in an interview.
According to data available on the state’s website, Brainerd High has been on the list since at least 2017, meaning for the past four years, it was among the lowest-performing schools, the lowest 5%, in the state.
But that’s no longer the case.
This year, Brainerd High made it off the priority list, a monumental achievement, Sorrells said. And the reason, she said, has little to do with getting tougher about academic performance. Instead, the past year, under her leadership, has been an all-hands-on-deck effort to serve the unique needs of the students — 95% of whom are Black or Hispanic.