Episode Details

Happy Friday!

Thank you for what you have been able to accomplish this week! Every week of this school year has resulted in positive results for our students demonstrated by our district goals data. I was very happy to report to the board Tuesday night that our on-grade-level reading percentage has reached 67 percent! This surpasses our goal of 60 and we still have several weeks of instruction to make a final push for our below-level readers and get them ready, and I do not mean ready for the ACT Aspire. I mean ready for what comes next.

Speaking of the Aspire test, the one caveat I would make about our reading scores is that the way we are measuring on-level is much more thorough than the way the ACT Aspire measures it, and I worry about that. I feel much more confident in our methods telling us whether our students can read or not. I want to thank our team of interventionists for the work they are doing to bring us these numbers. It has not been simple.

The rest of this Wrap-up will be about SB294 but I do want to provide one more bit of recognition for our district. I learned today that Holly Harshman has fully implemented 77 percent of Tier I behavioral interventions in our Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) system. This is part of our effort to reduce discipline referrals. You can see what all that entails in this document. All of our campuses are getting great recognition for the progress they are making and this is the latest milestone.

SB294

The bill was released Monday afternoon and I emailed it to all staff on Tuesday. If you have not read the bill yet, here is a link to it along with the fiscal impact on the state. The bill is 144 pages. Breanne Davis of Russellville is the sponsor. Twelve of the 20 members of the House Education Committee and 55 of the 100 members of the House of Representatives are co-sponsors of the bill. You may check the current status and keep up with the progress at this link. The bill was given a ‘do-pass’ recommendation from the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday but with the expectations that there would be amendments made by the House Education Committee.

There are a lot of good things in this bill but there are also a lot of questions about how to accomplish those things and how much funding will schools receive in order to pay for those things. I will touch on a few key points that raise concerns and are being considered for amendments.

Early Childhood

This part of the bill is encouraging except that there may not be a full understanding of the costs associated with the language that is used. For example, Section 51 is an expanded requirement for dyslexia screening in grades K through 2. The time and personnel needed for screening would be an increased cost to a district because of the frequency required in the bill. Also, with current dyslexia laws in the state, this requirement would trigger interventions that we would not have the personnel for because so many kindergartners begin school with dyslexia markers. Not because they have dyslexia, but because they have had no introduction to letters, sounds, and other early literacy practices. Screeners are currently used to inform teachers and help make decisions about how to proceed, but we do not report this data to the state. I believe this is why this screening language is in the bill. We are asking that this portion be amended and clarified.

Teacher Fair Dismissal

We have as