Rosa Fort High School | |
---|---|
Location | |
1100 Rosa Fort Dr, Tunica, MS 38676 United States | |
Information | |
Principal | Valarie Davis |
Grades | 9–12 |
Gender | Coeducational |
Enrollment | 521 (2017–2018[1]) |
Website | www |
Rosa Fort High School (RFHS) is a senior high school in unincorporated Tunica County, Mississippi,[2] adjacent to the North Tunica CDP,[3] and near Tunica. It is a part of the Tunica County School District.
After the rise of the gambling industry in the county in the 1990s, an influx of tax revenue went into the school system.[4] In 1990, according to a Fortune article about Tunica, one in three students at Tunica's high school graduated from high school. In 1991 no agency tracked graduation rates. According to the Fortune article, while "[m]ore kids are graduating from high school - there's no way to know for sure" whether a significant improvement had been made in the year 2007.[5] Despite the influx of tax revenue, the article argues, Rosa Fort High in 2007 was "a stubborn underperformer."[4] That year, it was ranked a "two" or "underperforming" in the State of Mississippi's five point scale. The article concluded that "Rosa Fort students aren't a whole lot better off academically than before the casinos arrived."[5] Ronald Love, who had been hired by the state in 1997 to supervise the Tunica school system, said "It is like Tunica suffers from a hangover from 100 years of poverty. There are vestiges of it everywhere: in education, in local politics, in the housing. And when you have been the poorest of the poor, well, an infusion of resources might lighten your load, but you still have the hangover."[5]
As of 2010[update] 98% of the students were black. This differed from the private Tunica Academy (formerly Tunica Institute for Learning) a segregation academy founded in the desegregation period, where 97% were white.[6]