District Activities Reflections

I participated in several activities that were intended to refine or further develop items from Improvement Plans.

 

We found that our communication of staff development opportunities was not reaching staff members in a timely enough fashion. This is because we have kept to a traditional catalog-style publication that has a firm “go to print” date, after which changes cannot be made. Therefore, the listing was always relatively late, and included a great deal of the upcoming ESC opportunities that were already full or unavailable by the time the catalog was posted. We designed a webpage to host staff development opportunities so that staff could view options as soon as they were made available, but we could still make changes and adjustments to the schedules if needed. We directly linked to the ESC website of opportunities, also eliminating the need for copying and pasting their information into our book. We plan on maintaining the webpage and continuing to refine the navigation of the page and subpages according to feedback. Because we routinely survey staff regarding professional development, we should include questions about the use of the website so we can understand how it was received and utilized.

 

We found the need to increase post-secondary educational options for our students. Not all students are interested in, or can afford a four-year university education directly out of high school. Research done in the community revealed a large gap in the postsecondary plans by students, and the opportunities available to them. I participated with others in the Academic Office to work on new partnerships, articulation agreements, and student selection procedures for new opportunities. We strengthened partnerships and additional dual credit options with the area junior college, as well as added partnerships with a technical school and an additional university for dual-credit options. The numbers of students participating in these options will be tracked in longitudinal study. We also can follow the students to record what difference is made in the rate of attaining certificates and degrees.

 

Our district has always maintained a full summer school program. However, as needs have changed and funding sources have dwindled, summer school needed to be re-focused. The purposes of the time with students, the materials needed, and the expectations for learning needed to have clarified expectations. I am responsible for getting summer school planned, selection of materials, and hiring of administrators. I sought much feedback in the process of doing this. We recommended all-new materials for grades PK-6, and we scheduled professional development on existing resources for older grade levels. We also revised procedures and expectations for staffing, student work sampling, and student fees where applicable. For evaluation, we anticipate to look at whether goals were met in student learning, retest success, and budgetary alignment.