Reports are required by various entities, including the state, the federal government and accreditation agencies.
Just not usually all at once, as was the case this fall. The Single Plan for Student Achievement and the LEAP Addendum were the subject of a Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District special school boarding meeting Jan. 19.
Despite the multiplicity of reports required this year, the administration did its best to avoid redundancy and focus efforts on defining a single set of goals all aimed at continuing and building on the high standards the school already has, said superintendent Paul Turnbull.
At Santa Ynez there is “a very unique alignment of the WASC, Strategic, LEA and Program Improvement plans,” said Kris Bergstrom, director of Educational Support Services for the county. “In many schools, the plans aren’t integrated.”
LEAP is the acronym for Local Education Agency Plan, which is a school-level plan required by federal law. For a myriad of reasons, the Santa Barbara County Board of Education office was hired to undertake the required review and write the report.
“At every meeting, your administrators came ready to play,” said Bergstrom. The district had a very short timeline to conduct the study write a report after the school fell under the Program Improvement umbrella of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In previous board meetings, Turnbull explained the fairly complicated directives of the NCLB. Reduced to its simplest terms, the act focuses primarily on math and English and requires the school as a whole, as well as each defined sub-group, to reach mandated levels of proficiency. Each year, the level increases by 10%.
By definition, non-English speaking students are not proficient in the English language, notes Turnbull. At some point, given the way the NCLB is written, all schools will fail and fall subject to the punitive measures of the act.
It is not that the school is doing a less good job, but rather that the definition of what is good enough continues to be reset more and more unrealistically high. But, said Turnbull, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.
Presenting the plan, Bergstrom had nothing by praise for the school – from the students, to the administration to the faculty. “It turned into a great effort,” she said of the LEAP Addendum. Bergstrom identified several focus areas in her report, including enhancing student engagement and elevating instructional rigor while also expanding research based instruction.
Bergstrom would also like to see an improvement in academic intervention protocols, with particular attention to English Learners (EL) and Socio-Economically Disadvantaged (SED) students. It was the low test scores of these two subgroups that pushed Santa Ynez into Program Improvement.
While the scores for EL and SED students were lower than last years’ NCLB dictates, Santa Ynez students consistently test higher than most EL and SED students in other area schools. Santa Ynez remains in the top 10% of schools in the state, even as compared to similar schools, said Turnbull.
Principal Mark Swanitz noted that targeted interventions and several other programs that were in place last year have been lost due to budget constraints. “We had a better system last year than we have this year, but we are working toward having a better system next year,” he said, noting that they are still looking for money to fund after-school programs.
In previous years, the Chumash funded afterschool tutoring, but no longer do so, leaving the school with only $9,000 available for the year for that purpose. At the moment, after-school tutoring is technically limited to Wednesday evenings in the Library. Teachers, however, often find a way to provide more.
As part of their contractual obligations, each faculty member gives back 100 hours to the school for such things as supervising afterschool activities, sports and tutoring. “Lots of teachers do more than their six hours a week,” said Swanitz. Although not required to do so, many faculty members come early, give up their lunch breaks and/or stay after school to provide extra assistance to students who step-up to get needed help.
Under the new plan, the school will also work to enhance collaboration practices for faculty and guidance counselors. Coordinating a system to do so is difficult because teachers are so busy providing students with extra help at times when those activities would otherwise take place, said Swanitz. Along the same lines, the school is seeking to improve the professional development program for faculty.
In orchestrating the master calendar, the school will try to do a better job identifying student needs and advising them academically. In a world of shrinking resources and disappearing dollars, identifying needs can be an easier task than meeting them, noted Turnbull, who is always hunting for creative ways to fill the gap.
Bergstrom, along with 13 team members, visited every classroom at least once and every teacher also had an opportunity to view their peers’ teaching styles. “Behind each of these big ideas are the ideas the faculty brought to the table through the walk-though,” said Bergstrom.
Rather than watching the teachers teach, the focus was on student responses to what was being taught. Noting that many times she and her group run into administrators and staff that want to make excuses or note exceptions, Bergstrom said that universal response at Santa Ynez was ‘How can we be better?’ “That puts you ahead of the game,” she said.
Making the school better was also the focus of the Single Plan for Student Achievement presented by Swanitz. Among the goals stated is maintaining the school’s current high CAHSEE passing and proficiency rates in math and English.
The CAHSEE is often referred to as the sophomore census or the High School Exit Exam. It will next be administered on Feb. 7-8. It is the most-high stakes test for the school and students, said Swanitz repeating his hope that parents will encourage their students.
As in the LEAP, Swanitz mapped out goals to increase the performance of EL and SED students on the CAHSEE, as well as working toward increased graduation rates for them. Likewise, Swanitz mapped out goals for improving communication among all those with a stake in the educational process as well as working toward a decrease in alcohol and drug use.
Swanitz touched only briefly on the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) self-study, which was authored this fall as a collaborative effort by Swanitz and faculty members, the purpose of which is to renew the school’s accreditation. A link to the WASC study: http://www.acswasc.org/about_overview.htm.
Both the LEAP and Single Plans were approved by the board.