Board discusses quarterly ‘Focus School’ report

At the Tuesday, May 27, Tecumseh School Board meeting, Tecumseh Acres Elementary school Principal Carl Lewandowski discussed the Focus School quarterly report for the Tecumseh Acres Elementary School. According to the Michigan Department of Education’s website, “Focus Schools consist of the ten percent of schools on the Top-to-Bottom list with the largest achievement gaps between its top 30 percent of students and its bottom 30 percent, based on average scale score.”Focus Schools participate in Michigan’s Superintendent’s Dropout Challenge, where the school identifies 10 to 15 students who are at risk due to attendance, behavioral problems or course or class proficiency. Tecumseh Acres Elementary School identified 15 fourth graders based on their third grade Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) reading scores. Only Tecumseh Acres Elementary School was identified as a Focus School in the Tecumseh School district.Of the 15 students identified, all but one had made growth in reading skills. “We have some kids as high as 12 months with some as little as three months growth,” said Lewandowski. “Five are at the fourth grade reading level and that is one-third of the 15 kids we have been tracking. Three are just below that, so they are at mid-third grade or just below fourth grade level.” Of the 15 identified students, eight are receiving special education. Six of those eight students are not reading at a fourth grade level. One is an English as a Second Language (ESL) student.“We help them to struggle successfully is sort of the motto we have taken on. We know they are going to struggle probably forever to read and to write. So what can we do to make them the best they can be knowing that most likely it’s still going to be hard for them to do,” Lewandowski said. Lewandowski now meets with teachers every month and asks about their struggling students. Teachers have to show data points on their struggling students about how they are doing, what strategies the teachers are using, describe the student as a learner, and what does the teachers know about the students. All Tecumseh School District elementary schools have similar procedures in place, according to Supt. Kelly Coffin.“Sometimes, teachers talk about one, two or three students that are struggling,” said Lewandowski. “We can attribute growth to teachers staying focused.”“There is also going to be this bottom group that’s going to struggle no matter what teachers do, no matter what programs in place. The only thing you can do is come up with something that tries to raise it up as much as you can that may or may not be what the state is looking for,” said Board Member Roger Hart. “They [the state] are worried about this gap. They [students] are not all going to be 100 percent,” said Board Member Edwin Tritt. “All these things that the state does… teachers know what to do if you allow them to do it,” said Board Member Jim Rice. “And there’s a lot of these games that the state is playing, and the people who set up the rules of the games for the state aren’t educators. So, how are you coming up with the rules of the game then? To me, the positive was Carl saying we learned to do some things that’s helped us to identify, and to be able to tell that, every student is at least making some progress. If nothing else good comes out of this, that, to me, is the big plus,” Rice said. The board also heard from Aramark Food Service Director Zach Cohen about student participation in the school lunch program. Four-hundred-thirty-five students in the Tecumseh’s middle and high schools took a survey about their participation in school offered lunches. While Cohen presented the board with data from the student-completed survey, Cohen also brought data from their point of sale program showing increases in participation year-over-year. The Tecumseh High School and Sutton Elementary School both saw a 12 percent increase in participation, while Tecumseh Acres saw an eight percent increase. District wide, there was just under a five percent increase in lunch participation. Just under a five percent increase may not seem like much, but there were challenges with the slight enrollment decline, nutritional guidelines and loss of service days, said Cohen. During the Superintendent’s Report, Coffin said the district is going to move forward with the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) assessment. The assessment tests students growth and it can be tied directly to classroom instruction. “I think, right now, teachers are ready to be able to use this data to inform their instruction,” said Coffin. “The interesting piece now is they have to give up something. They’re doing so much assessment they cannot keep adding on to the number of assessments. So we’ll help them decide what they’re to give up once they realize how good this data will be. It’s going to be very important that we have some consistent data in our classroom, especially with where the state hasn’t landed yet with our MEAP assessment.”In other business the school board members:• Unanimously approved the Tecumseh High School Germany Trip, June 11-19.• Unanimously approved a three-year extension with First Student on the Pupil Transportation Service Agreement that was discussed at the Monday, May 12 Tecumseh School Board Meeting.• Adjourned into closed session for a performance evaluation of Supt. Kelly Coffin.