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Fairhope East principal credits 3-mil overlay with gains for struggling students
Summary
Principal Christina Stacy told the Fairhope City Council work session that 3-mil overlay tax funds pay for interventionists and specialized staff who have helped reduce the number of students at the lowest intervention tier and raise proficiency on state tests.
Principal Christina Stacy of Fairhope East Elementary presented to the Fairhope City Council work session about how funding from the school's 3-mil overlay tax has been used to hire interventionists, instructional coaches and a bilingual reading coach and to staff a STEAM lab.
Stacy said the money allowed the school to shift many part-time interventionists to full-time positions and to hire an ESL-certified reading coach, which she credited with measurable gains for students in reading, math and science. "We couldn't do that without 3 mil," Stacy told council members.
The presentation focused on progress monitoring data from STAR assessments and state science testing. Stacy said second-grade students showed a 16 percent reduction in the number of students in the highest intervention tier, third grade 26 percent, fourth grade 55 percent and fifth grade 18 percent. She described kindergarten growth from 55 percent meeting benchmarks at the start of the year to 76 percent at year-end and said Fairhope East scored 76 percent proficient on fourth-grade ACAP science, above Baldwin County (61 percent) and the state (50 percent).
Stacy explained how the STAR progress-monitoring system produces scaled scores, grade-level equivalents and percentiles and cautioned council members about interpreting those figures linearly. She described the school's model as one that favors people—interventionists, coaches and the ESL specialist—arguing that more full-time staff creates capacity to move students out of intensive intervention tiers and to give more instructional time to others.
Stacy also emphasized the school's Hispanic/ELL population, saying the bilingual reading coach works all day with a caseload that had previously been covered only part time. She called the teacher a "unicorn" because of bilingual reading expertise and prior ESL experience, and said that focused intervention was changing outcomes for that subgroup.
The presentation was framed as an informational update; council members asked technical questions about the measures and the STAR scoring system. No council action or vote on the overlay tax was taken during the work session.
Stacy closed by noting the school's overall report-card score of 97 and saying the school will continue to "drill down" into small pockets of need to sustain that performance.
