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Glenwood Elementary highlights 'equity, community and joy,' plans daily small‑group instruction to narrow achievement gaps
Summary
Glenwood Elementary principal Jay Hodgson presented school strategies including scheduled daily small‑group instruction, learning walks, and community enrichment to address achievement gaps for English learners and students with disabilities.
Glenwood Elementary Principal Jay Hodgson told the San Rafael City Schools board the school is focusing on “equity, community and joy” through a mix of instruction changes, student leadership and family engagement.
Hodgson said the school has established three priorities — ongoing collaboration with families, curricular fidelity across grades, and staff and student wellness — and is scheduling daily 30‑minute small‑group instructional blocks so teachers can provide targeted intervention.
“To make sure kids who go from one grade to the next have commonalities throughout, we are blocking time for small‑group instruction every day,” Hodgson said. He described learning walks by grade‑level teams, routine formative assessments and an instructional coach who runs daily interventions for newcomers and other students needing support.
Hodgson showed the board test‑result snapshots and said overall proficiency was 68% in English language arts and 70% in math, while English learners, students with disabilities and socioeconomically disadvantaged students performed at lower levels. He said the school will prioritize language development, sentence frames and structured speaking protocols and that staff will meet three times a month as a professional learning community to refine strategies.
He also highlighted extracurricular and community programs — monthly “mobile maker” labs, a reptile program, student council announcements, SOAR awards and a “Taste the World” multicultural event — that, he said, build engagement that reinforces academic learning.
Trustees asked for details about the English learner population and the school’s measures to reclassify students; Hodson said Glenwood has 33 multilingual learners who have not yet met redesignation criteria and that reclassification, ELPAC performance and daily intervention work are key levers for progress.
Why it matters: The presentation laid out concrete instructional practices and community partnerships the school will use to reduce disparities and improve outcomes for historically underserved groups.
