Reidland High School 2009-2010 SBDM Council Report Environment: - PDF document

McCracken County Board of Education May 2010 Reidland High School 2009-2010 SBDM Council Report

Environment: School environment, a key component of school culture, has been an area of strong emphasis for Reidland High School for the past three years. We make a conscious effort to maintain our facilities at the highest level. Our custodial staff works tirelessly to keep our buildings clean and orderly. This year we have replaced the old aluminum and glass doors and enclosure leading into our band building with new glass doors. This has provided greater security for this facility. Not only do they improve function, but they are much cleaner in appearance. We have also replaced the three old doors that lead into our weight training and fitness facility. This too has provided greater security and improved the appearance of the building. With the support of Darrell Sullivan and Mr. Heller, we have greatly improved the security and appearance of our campus, each of the past three years. During the fall semester of this year, we received several new pieces of equipment for our cafeteria. As a result of a special grant, we now have a new dishwasher, two new ovens, a new refrigerator, a new warmer, and three new milk boxes. These new additions have greatly added to our cafeteria staff’s productivity and efficiency.

As part of our continuing effort to provide a safe environment for everyone in our building, last summer, we installed over 400 built-in locks in our existing lockers. We also had the lockers in our older wing refurbished. These lockers are over 30 years old; however, each locker was disassembled, cleaned, and painted. They were originally a much worn tan color, but now they match the red lockers located in our newer wing. We also provided padlocks for each of the refurbished lockers being used by students. With our new one-to one computer initiative, we felt it was extremely important to provide every student with secure storage. We also removed several hundred lockers that were not being used in our older wing. This widened our hallways by leaving lockers on only one side of the hallway, and provided more clear sightlines for supervision. School Culture: As a continuation of the previous two years, we continue to focus on the establishment and practice of a positive school culture. Just as in other years, we have adopted a new theme for this year; one that is tied to a musical accompaniment. We chose, “We “R” Reidland- Can You Feel It?” as this year’s theme. We chose the “R” as our new logo for our football team, making this theme tie in with the unveiling of our new uniforms this year. We continue to recognize student success at every opportunity via daily announcements, student of the month bulletin boards, and our “Top dogs of the Week”. We continue to provide recognition for success on the state assessment and have offered a new incentive this year for good faith effort. As a result of students answering every multiple choice question and 99.7% of the open response questions on this year’s state assessment, we are taking the entire school to see a Southern Illinois Miners baseball game on May 12 th . Prior to testing, we provided a motivational assembly by two young men from Texas. They performed “Cometry”, a blend of comedy and poetry for our student body.

In an effort to promote good character traits in our students, we have posted banners of character traits throughout the building. Every day during announcements, a quote of the day is read, focusing on positive character practices. Students often provide quotes to be read. Research has shown that maintaining a daily focus on positive character traits contributes to successful schools. With this in mind, we have made character education a daily commitment. Given our socio-economic demographic, we have found it necessary to develop a teenage support programs. With the support of our Greyhound Family Resource Center, this year we provided free make-up and hair dressers for several of our students who were attending the prom. The Greyhound Center also provided dresses and shoes for several girls through local donations. We have continued our Sister to Sister support program throughout the school year. We have planned to establish a clothing bank for next year. This bank will be operated by the Greyhound Center and will allow students to trade good used clothing that they have outgrown or do not use, for some other item of clothing from the bank. This year we started a significant new initiative designed to reach our at-risk 9 th and 10 th graders. This spring, we chose 60 at-risk freshmen to take on campus tours at Murray State University and Western Kentucky University. We invited each of their parents as well. Most of these students had never been to a college campus and were very surprised by the tours. Our goal was to inspire underclassmen to be more diligent with their school work by helping them to realize that they all have the opportunity to go to college. We received such positive feedback, that we intend to take the entire 10 th grade to the university of Kentucky and the University of Louisville next year. We also plan to take the entire 9 th grade to Murray State and Western Kentucky Universities next year. Academic Achievement

As a result of Senate Bill 1, we are going through a transition period for our state assessment. This year, our test results were presented in a format that reflected the percentage of our students scoring either Novice, Apprentice, Proficient, or Distinguished. The chart listed below reflects the percentage change from 2007 through 2009 in the areas of Proficient and Distinguished. Percent Scoring Proficient Percent Scoring Distinguished Content Area 2007 (P) 2008(P) 2009 (P) 2007 (D) 2008 (D) 2009 (D) Reading 51.09% 57.38% 56.43% 8.76% 8.20% 4.29% Math 38.74% 32.74% 41.18% 10.81% 14.16% 1.96% Science 50.45% 44.25% 35.29% 8.11% 7.08% 1.96% Social Studies 37.84% 34.51% 27.45% 26.13% 13.27% 10.78% On-Demand Writing 21.10% 30.09% 37.39% N/A 8.85% 9.57% These results show a statistical constant or growth in the percentage of proficient Reading, Math, and On-Demand Writing. We experienced a decline in the percentage of students who scored proficient in Science and Social studies. The percentage of students who scored distinguished declined in Reading, Math, Science, and Social Studies. Our percentage of distinguished scores increased in On-Demand Writing for the third year in a row. As we disaggregated the data, we discovered that a large number of our students failed to complete one or more open response questions on the 2009 state assessment. We have focused on improving open response questions throughout this school year. As a result of our efforts, we had 12 unanswered open response questions out of more than 4000 on the 2010 state assessment. During the 2009-2010 school year, Reidland High School implemented the Advanced Placement program from the National Math and Science Initiative. As the smallest Kentucky school in cohort I, we have registered tremendous gains in our Advanced Placement enrollment. This year we had a total of 100 students enrolled in seven different AP courses. We administered 185 AP exams during May 2010. Given our academic improvement over the past two years, our scores have fallen short of our expectations for our students. As a school administrative staff, instructional staff, and SBDM Council, we feel that we have addressed many of the contributing factors to this short term decline. Based on the efforts of our students on the 2010 state assessment, we are confident that we will see some positive improvements in next fall’s results. Academic Coaches The allocation of a part-time instructional coach to assist our teaching staff with strategies and ideas has been a tremendous help. Linda Wyatt serves as our instructional coach, working three days a week. She serves as the coordinator of our year round Content Focus program that provides test taking strategies and content reviews for all of our students. She develops and coordinates the lesson plans for each grade level Content Focus meeting and provides the information to our instructional staff. She serves as a trainer for new technology and regularly consults with teachers to improve instruction and assessments. With the implementation of our one-to-one computer initiative, we have been provided the services of Molly Goodman as a secondary technology “coach”. Molly spends one