Last night’s school Board meeting (Jan 17th) was relatively short. There were two presentations made. Rob Dill, principal of Roane County High School and Celia Simon, a teacher at the school gave a presentation on the status of their 9th grade academy and Stephanie Walker led a presentation on a new Data Driven method for tracking students in Special Education.
The Board was presented an American Flag from the Daughters of the American Revolution, Avery Trace Chapter with headquartered in
Kingston.
The flag will be flown outside the school board building on Bluff road.
In Reports, school Budget Director Eric Harbin gave the quarterly summary financial report for December, 2007.
During committee reports, Board member Wade McCullough passed out minutes from the January 10th, 2008 Negotiation Team meeting.
In the facilities overview, a Board retreat is being planned for sometime in February or March to address the status of the building program and what steps to take next in the attempt to alleviate the overcrowding at some of the elementary and middle schools in the county.
In business items, a motion was made and passed to send the 2008-2009 calendar back to the Educational Council for them to rework it so as to include not only a fall break but to investigate the possibility of what can be done to start school later. It is hoped that the Ed Council can send another calendar to the Board for its consideration soon.
The Board also passed a resolution to support the Princess Theatre in Harriman.
In the special report on the Freshman Academy at Roane County High School Mr. Dill and Ms. Simon discussed why the Academy was started. The goal of the freshmen academy is to decrease the amount of dropouts. The idea was that if you stopped freshmen from falling behind early, then the chances that that they will drop out of high school will decrease. By intervening early when freshmen fall behind, they will transition more easily into high school and be more likely to graduate on time.
There have been early successes as there has been increased communication between the core teachers of the freshman academy. Teachers have a common planning period within the groups so they are able to get together and discuss how students are doing in each of the classes.
This is the second year of the Academy and already there have been many lessons learned as Ms. Simon stated “it is a works in progress”.
Data from area schools using similar academies have shown remarkable success. I applaud our teaching staff for putting the extra work into creating a program like this. It has required much extra effort and work on their own time to develop this and I hope things continue to improve. This is a classic case of putting a lot of work up front on something in order for it to pay big dividends later.
Upon entry to the Board room I noticed the walls lined with charts and graphs. This was part of the presentation that was given to the Board on Data Driven tracking of Special Education students in the system. Obviously, I was very interested in this as my profession is data analysis. During the report it was learned that this concept was introduced at the Tennessee Lead conference in fall of 2005. After a visit to Johnson County in November 2006 a plan was devised to implement this system in Roane County. Pilot programs were set up at seven schools in 2006-2007 and expanded by two more this year. Each school is assigned data team leaders that are in charge of schedules, meetings, setting up data walls and making reports to the Special Education Supervisor.
Data is then analyzed and improvements are based on data review and results prominently displayed showing school needs and celebrations.
Special folders are developed for each student that document progress, detect trends, and drive IEP goal development.
As with the freshman academy at Roane County high school, this is just another case of our teachers going the extra mile to provide the best education they can for our students. Again, I am proud of our staff for being so self-starting and pro-active in doing their work.
