Bridal Middle School launches attendance push and common‑instruction plan as ISBE intensive school

Bridal Middle School principal Ben Stover told the board that the school is pursuing a multi‑year school improvement plan after being designated an intensive school by the Illinois State Board of Education.
"If we collectively improve our tier 1 classroom environments and tier 1 instruction, then we're going to see growth and achievement for each student," Principal Ben Stover said, summarizing the school's theory of action.
Stover said Bridal serves roughly 1,100 students, with more than half identified as English learners, and that the school expanded a self‑contained special education ("plus") program to two classrooms this year. He described key tactics: a focus on explicit instruction, common assessments developed by grade‑level professional learning communities (PLCs), a target that 80% of students should meet learning goals from tier‑1 instruction, and use of STAR assessment data three times per year for monitoring.
To address chronic absenteeism, Stover said the school instituted a lunch‑time "catch up" intervention: students who missed school are required to come to a supervised lunch session to complete missed work or receive help. Stover said the intervention had been in place only a few days but that staff had already seen improvements in attendance and had parents calling to say their children were motivated to avoid the lunch sessions.
The school also deployed parent liaisons who handle attendance outreach, family communication and mass messaging, and hired behavior intervention specialists (referred to as "deans") to investigate incidents and manage discipline so assistant principals can spend more time in classrooms improving instruction.
Discussion only: board members praised the school's approach and asked for continued data updates; no formal board action was taken during the presentation.
Ending: Stover said the school will continue embedded professional development on Thursdays and provide three progress updates to the board over the school improvement cycle.