North Judson-San Pierre School Board members received presentations over the annual school improvement plans when members met for their September meeting.
Elementary School Principal Julie Berndt went first and noted that officials are currently in the proofreading stage and added that their entire document will be more than 70 pages.
She said a Comprehensive Needs Assessment was conducted over the summer to establish what areas needed to be improved upon and additional assessments were done once test scores were available.
She laid out the main ‘focus goals’ that officials are looking to work on in the 2019-2020 school year. The goals include improving the English/Language Arts and Math ILearn scores for grades 3-6 by 5-8 percent compared to the previous year’s scores.
Helping students in grades K-2 reach a score of 60 percent or higher on the end of the school year benchmark PIVOT INSPECT English/Language Arts and Math assessments is another focus of the improvement plan.
Elementary school officials also identified a specific goal related to students in special education classes. The plan notes that they hope they can improve the overall achievement percentage of special needs students by 5-8 percent on the ILearn test.
In addition to highlighting those focus areas and addressing the strategies that will be utilized to accomplish those goals, Berndt touched on some notable achievements and areas where they have seen improvement over the last few years.
Some of those included the success of the uninterrupted 90-minute reading block, increasing access to technology that’s available to students and the noticeable impact of implementing the ‘Bluejay Way’ positive behavior program.
Berndt also emphasized the adoption of a school-wide math series in spring of 2018 and the plans to adopt a school-wide reading series next spring. It was noted that having some consistency between the grade levels seems to be beneficial.
In addition to those things, she highlighted the fact that the curriculum maps have been revised, the Facebook page and school website are regularly updated and they have a very active PTO.
School Board members provided their approval for the Elementary School’s improvement plan to be submitted to state officials prior to the October deadline. The school improvement plan for the junior/senior high school was also presented and will be covered in a future story.
The information provided above is just a synopsis of what was presented. You can find more details from Principal Berndt’s presentation below:
