The Garden City Telegram
Email this story | Add Your Comment
| Read (0) Comments
USD 457 misses testing target
Published 7/14/2009 in Local News : Education
By MONICA SPRINGER
Garden City USD 457 will remain on improvement as it did not make Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, in reading, the Board of Education learned at its meeting on Monday night.
In the 2008-09 school year, more than 3,600 students in USD 457 were tested in reading and math. The results of those state assessments are used to determine if the district is making AYP, mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Darren Dennis, director of learning services, and Steve Nordby, assessment coordinator, gave a brief presentation to the board outlining the preliminary results of AYP. The Kansas Department of Education will release final results of AYP at a later date.
USD 457 made AYP in math but did not meet AYP in reading. One elementary school, one intermediate center, one middle school and the high school did not meet targets for reading. Those schools, however, made AYP last year and will not be placed on improvement. It takes two years for a school to go on improvement and to go off improvement.
Nordby said that a district that is placed on improvement has to write a plan to target improvement in subgroups that did not make AYP. Schools that did not make AYP also have to have a plan in place to improve test scores.
A slideshow Dennis and Nordby presented showed a graph with how close the district came: district wide, 82.4 percent of students, or 2,883 students, were proficient. There were 614 students not proficient, making the district two students short.
To make AYP as a district this year, students must score at least 76.7 percent proficient in reading and 70.5 percent proficient in math.
Dennis and Nordby said the district is continuing to see growth and improvement in schools, despite not making AYP. In math, there was an increase of 4 percent in the number of students who scored exemplary this year compared to last year. In reading, there was about a 2 percent increase in the number of students who scored exemplary this year.
"Students are performing at higher levels every year. We have a lot to be proud of, and we still have a lot to do," Dennis said.
To make AYP, a school or district must demonstrate that a state-determined, annually increasing percentage of its students -- overall and in certain demographic subgroups -- have passed state reading and math assessments. Subgroups, such as Hispanics, whites, English-language learners and students with disabilities, are counted at a school if they consist of at least 30 students.
This year, USD 457 did not meet AYP in reading in one subgroup, which was students with disabilities.
In math, an elementary school and the two middle schools did not meet AYP targets. The two middle schools are on improvement in math, although the district as a whole met AYP in math.
Kenneth Henderson Middle School missed making AYP for two years in a row, placing them on improvement. Abe Hubert Middle School will remain on improvement because the school would have had to make AYP this year to go off improvement.
In order to make AYP, a kindergarten through eighth-grade school must have at least 79.9 percent of its students proficient in reading, with high school students 76.7 percent proficient in reading.
In math, K-8 students must be at least 77.8 percent proficient and high school students 70.5 percent proficient.
Dennis and Nordby said they will present a more detailed presentation of the scores from each building and grade level at a future Board of Education meeting.
Proposed budget
The Board of Education also saw a proposed budget for 2009-10, which includes a mill levy hike for the district's bond issue and local option budget.
The mill levy will increase from 36.422 mills to 45.197 mills if the board approves the budget. The majority of that mill levy increase, 8.076 mills, will increase because of the district's successful bond election in November 2008.
Another part of the increase in the proposed budget, 1.92 mills, will go toward increasing the district's local option budget.
In the proposed budget, the local option budget will increase $732,838. The local option budget then would total $8,910,769, Kathleen Whitley, financial officer, said.
The board will discuss the budget again on July 27 and consider approving it for publication, and a public hearing is scheduled to take place Aug. 10.
Also at Monday night's meeting, the Board of Education approved teacher contracts for the 2009-10 school year. The contract calls for teachers who are eligible to move a step on the salary schedule to do so, but no increase to the base pay.
The district will increase the employee fringe to correspond with the increase in a single premium, from $490 per month to $500 per month.
Download a copy of Monday's USD 457 meeting materials, or see a copy of the 2008-09 teacher salary schedule, which would remain in place for 2009-10 under the approved negotiated agreement.
Found 0 comment(s)!
Twitter Updates
