At the July 16 Buffalo City School District Board of Education meeting, Chief Academic Officer Botticelli presented interim literacy data tied to the board's goals, reporting mixed results across three targets and outlining next steps.

Botticelli said the district met interim goal 1.3: the percent of economically disadvantaged grade-3 students who were "well below average" on the DIBELS assessment fell from 47% in 2024 to the board's target of 43% in 2025. She said the measure captures fluency and decoding skills and attributed improvement to targeted reading interventions, including Orton Gillingham instruction and RTI (response to intervention).

By contrast, interim goal 1.2—measuring the percent of economically disadvantaged grade-3 students who are proficient on DIBELS—fell short: the district reached 41% against a 45% goal (an improvement from 40% the prior year, Botticelli said). Botticelli described decoding and fluency as among the most difficult skills to acquire and said the district will expand coaching and add decodable texts to classroom practice.

On a broader comprehension measure (iReady), interim goal 1.1 was exceeded: Botticelli said students surpassed the district target, noting that once students achieve decoding proficiency they tend to meet higher-order comprehension targets.

Botticelli described a partnership with IMSE, a provider of Orton Gillingham training: IMSE visited schools twice this year (an initial visit and a follow-up coaching visit) and worked on Orton Gillingham and morphology instruction. Ten schools received on-site coaching this year; the schools were chosen based on classroom visits and building-level data, Botticelli said. IMSE will expand coaching to additional elementary schools next year, and some schools used school-level funds to bring IMSE back.

Board members asked for disaggregated school-level data and comparisons between schools that received IMSE coaching and those that did not. Botticelli said the district analyzes data by school and subgroup and can provide more detailed comparisons at the request of the board; she said the provided report followed the board's preferred format.

Botticelli also gave a sample size for one breakout: the economically disadvantaged grade-3 group was listed as 1,872 students in the report (a year-end count described in discussion as about 1,900 at grade level). Board members and staff noted that New York State's official assessments will be available later and that DIBELS and iReady are internal, standardized assessments used as interim measures.

No policy changes were adopted; the presentation closed with board members asking staff to bring more disaggregated and classroom-level findings to the implementation committee to identify successful practices for replication.