CLT is proud to feature Umatilla High School in Umatilla, Florida as our latest Partner School Spotlight. We had the opportunity to sit down with Principal Brent Frazier to ask some questions about what makes his school so successful.
What traditions does your school incorporate to encourage school culture and community?
At Umatilla High School, culture is built through intentional, consistent traditions—not just occasional events. Our motto, “Dream It. Believe It. Achieve It!,” is something we try to make visible in the daily experience of students and staff.
One of the most important traditions is our emphasis on Believing in You. We intentionally create opportunities for adults to know students beyond their grades and schedules. Our Believing in You ambassadors help reinforce the message that every student has someone in their corner.
We also use Bulldog Time intentionally—not simply as an intervention period, but as an opportunity to provide additional support, build relationships, and create opportunities for students to experience success.
Our PLC culture is another tradition. Collaboration isn’t something we schedule once in a while; it is part of how we operate. Teachers regularly work together around student learning, evidence, instructional strategies, and how we can better serve students.
Throughout the year, we celebrate academic accomplishments, athletics, the arts, student leadership, teachers, and support staff. We want students to understand that there are many ways to belong and many ways to be successful at UHS.
Ultimately, our traditions communicate one message: you matter here.
What does your school do better than any other?
If I had to identify one thing that Umatilla High School does exceptionally well, it would be making people believe that they are capable of more than they thought possible.
Our story isn’t really about a program. It’s about changing the trajectory of a school by changing what people believed was possible.
When I arrived at UHS, we were projected to receive a D. Five years later, we earned the first A in school history. But the grade isn’t the story. The story is the hundreds of students who began taking courses they never thought were for them, the teachers who began believing that their instructional practice could change outcomes, and the families who began seeing college and career opportunities that previously seemed out of reach.
Our Cambridge/AICE program is a great example. We went from just a couple of AICE courses to more than eleven. Students who might never have considered themselves “college material” were earning AICE diplomas and accessing Bright Futures opportunities.
But the moment that captures UHS for me isn’t necessarily an award ceremony or an accountability announcement.
It’s walking through the building and seeing a student who once struggled academically sitting with a teacher after school, working through a problem, while the teacher refuses to give up on them.
That’s Umatilla.
We don’t define students by where they start. We focus on where they can go.
Our journey from Impact to Legacy is really about that. We want every student and every adult who walks through our doors to leave believing they made a difference—and that their best days are still ahead.
What is the one piece of curriculum that your school could not do without?
Literacy.
Regardless of whether a student is taking AICE, Algebra, Biology, a CTE course, an art class, or playing football, the ability to read, comprehend, communicate, analyze, and apply information is foundational.
We’ve therefore tried to make literacy everyone’s responsibility rather than something that belongs only to the English department.
Our literacy work includes intentional attention to reading and understanding content in every classroom. We also use instructional coaching and department collaboration to focus on whether students are actually understanding the content—not simply whether the teacher covered it.
One of our important instructional questions is essentially:
Do students understand the content the first time?
That question changes instruction. It moves us away from simply delivering curriculum and toward ensuring that students can actually access and use it.
How do athletics fit into your vision of education? What about the arts? Math and science?
At UHS, we don’t view athletics, the arts, academics, and career education as competing priorities. They are different pathways to the same goal: developing the whole student.
Athletics
Athletics teaches lessons that can’t always be taught in a traditional classroom—discipline, perseverance, teamwork, handling adversity, accountability, and leadership.
We expect our coaches to understand that they are educators first. Winning is important, but developing young people is the mission.
Arts
The arts provide another avenue for students to discover identity, creativity, confidence, and belonging. A student who may not initially connect with traditional academics may discover that school becomes meaningful through music, theater, visual arts, or another creative discipline.
Those experiences matter because engagement is often the doorway to achievement.
Math and Science
Our approach in math and science is heavily centered on student understanding rather than simply completing standards.
We use PLCs to examine student evidence and identify where students are struggling. In math, our MAVID/AVID approach provides additional support for students who need help moving beyond Algebra I and accessing more rigorous mathematics.
We also believe strongly in expanding access. Our Cambridge/AICE offerings give students opportunities to engage in rigorous coursework that they may not have previously considered.
Across disciplines, our instructional work focuses on a few common questions:
- What do we want students to learn?
- How will we know they learned it?
- What evidence do we have?
- What do we do when they don’t understand?
- How do we extend learning when they do?
That common language allows athletics, arts, math, science, English, CTE, and every other part of the school to contribute to the same mission.
What advice would you give to schools considering CLT?
I would encourage schools to look at the CLT as another pathway for students to demonstrate what they know and what they are capable of, particularly for students who may not perform as well on traditional assessments.
At Umatilla High School, our philosophy is that one test should not define a student’s future. We want to provide students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate college readiness and, when applicable, meet Florida graduation requirements.
The key is not simply offering the CLT. Schools need to make sure students understand the assessment, have access to preparation, and have adults who believe they can be successful. We have found that when students understand that there are different pathways to demonstrate readiness, it can change their mindset from “I can’t pass this test” to “I have another opportunity to show what I know.”
I would also encourage schools to look at CLT as part of a larger college- and career-readiness strategy, rather than as a replacement for everything else. Our goal at UHS is to expand opportunities for students—through AICE, AP, CTE, dual enrollment, athletics, the arts, and assessments such as CLT—so that students leave high school with as many doors open as possible.