Lakeland to submit Continuous Improvement Plan to state; board to review at next meeting

Assistant Superintendent Jake Massie told the Lakeland Joint School District Board of Trustees that he will submit the district's Continuous Improvement Plan (SIP) to the State Board of Education by Oct. 1 and asked the board to consider formal approval at the next regular meeting.

Massie said the SIP uses a state template and includes two parts: a narrative describing mission, vision and community involvement, and a metrics section that lists targets and actuals for graduation, ISAT proficiency and growth, literacy measures and staff performance. "This needs to be submitted to the state board of education by October 1," Massie said, describing his plan to place the SIP on the board agenda for approval.

Why it matters: the SIP is the district's required accountability document to the state and contains the measurable targets the board sets for graduation, proficiency and growth. It forms the basis for public reporting and guides where the district directs professional development and other resources.

Massie walked trustees through the data layers informing the SIP: the Idaho Report Card (the state accountability site), state-required assessments such as the ISAT and IRI, non-mandated standardized instruments the district uses (for example, SAT and NWEA/MAP), and in-district, classroom-level measures. He emphasized that the SIP format is a state template and some fields reflect state-defined accountability items the district cannot change.

On specific metrics, Massie presented last year's targets and actuals and discussed proposed targets for the coming year. The presentation highlighted: - Four-year cohort graduation rate: last year's target 95%, actual 95.1%; the draft target proposed to remain at 95%. - Grade-level ISAT proficiency examples: an 8th-grade math target of 50% with an actual of 44% was discussed; trustees asked for cohort-based target-setting (a 3% increase from the prior cohort was repeatedly suggested). - Adequate growth measures: Massie noted that "adequate growth" means roughly one year's worth of progress on ISAT and that some cohorts showed substantial adequate-growth rates (for example, a reported 61.5% adequate growth in one math cohort).

Trustees and staff discussed how targets were set in prior years (often a 3% increase from prior actuals) and asked Massie to recalculate some proposed targets using cohort-level prior-year data rather than the spreadsheet placeholders he showed. Massie agreed to pull prior-cohort numbers and tighten the draft targets before the formal submission.

Several board members raised data-collection concerns: principals and counselors are still assembling some college-and-career advising figures, and Massie said that section remained incomplete because high-school staff have been "slammed" and needed additional time to locate historical records. He told the board he would gather the missing data and incorporate it into the SIP before submission.

On staff-performance measures, Massie explained the SIP template lists staff groups and district-level metrics; trustees noted the district's historical practice of teacher-level goal-setting (teachers choose assessment tools for their individual evaluation goals) makes some district-level aggregation appear inconsistent. Massie said he would research how the state expects those staff-performance cells to be reported and reconcile the narrative and numbers.

Board direction and next steps: trustees generally endorsed using a consistent approach (a 3% adjusted-from-actuals rule was suggested repeatedly) and asked Massie to: - Recompute targets using prior cohort data where appropriate; - Collect missing college-and-career advising numbers from principals and counselors; and - Return a finalized draft for board approval at the next regular meeting so Massie can meet the Oct. 1 submission deadline.

No formal motion or vote was taken during the workshop; Massie framed the presentation as a staff recommendation and requested the board's input before formal approval. "My plan was to put this on next week's board meeting, regular board meeting for approval," Massie said. He asked trustees whether that quick turnaround was acceptable; they indicated it was.

Ending: Massie thanked trustees and noted he would refine the draft and email trustees any substantive changes ahead of the next meeting. He named the State Board liaison, Nicholas Wagner, as a helpful contact he had consulted while preparing the SIP.