Galesburg High details Student Success program overhaul, credits and Edgenuity safeguards

Galesburg CUSD 205 Assistant Superintendent Mindy Ritchie and Student Success staff described a pared-down but more targeted Student Success program at a March 10 Board of Education meeting, saying the high-school program now serves about 35 students and focuses on teacher-led classes, credit recovery with Edgenuity and targeted after-school interventions.

Ritchie said the program aims to return students to mainstream classes and improve graduation rates. "The goal is to get them back in the classroom outside of Student Success, ultimately, for them to graduate high school," she said.

The program now largely emphasizes teacher-taught courses and individualized supports rather than the larger staffing model used immediately after the pandemic. Coordinator Sarah Wills told the board the program serves 35 students overall and that 17 are in teacher-led courses; other components listed in the presentation included credit recovery (50 students), the Twilight after-school recovery program (about 60), concept-recovery work (33 last semester) and 15 students receiving homebound instruction. "Teacher-taught is our biggest portion of Student Success," Wills said.

Heather Patterson, the program—s credit-recovery teacher, described classroom practices and academic integrity safeguards in Edgenuity, the district—s online credit-recovery platform. Patterson said the district is in year two of a three-year Edgenuity contract and has locked settings on tests and coursework, uses an AI detector and plagiarism-checking tools, and enforces a minimum 70 percent relative grade for course completion. "We are all the way locked down. We are pretty serious on the rigidity of how we have it," Patterson said.

Patterson and Wills described how Edgenuity is integrated into multiple program components—credit recovery, Twilight, concept-recovery, summer school and homebound instruction—and how teachers map online sequences to in-person semester pacing so students who miss extended time can rejoin regular classes more easily. Patterson said typical Edgenuity courses are built for 20—25 hours of student work and that students are expected to complete a weekly minimum pace (about 10 percent of a course per week) to finish two classes in a semester.

On outcomes, presenters gave the Board figures tying Student Success to graduation and failure metrics. Ritchie said the district's graduation rate stabilized near 85.4 percent last year; staff reported that 27.4 percent of seniors made some use of Student Success services. Presenters told the Board that without Student Success supports the district—s graduating class would have been lower (the presentation said 58 percent in a staff calculation). The presentation also noted course-failure counts the program targets: roughly 788 failed courses in one recent fall semester, 794 in the preceding spring and 793 in the most recent semester, with dozens of those failures involving seniors.

Board members asked about dependence on online platforms and the district—s contract choice. Wills said the district evaluates Edgenuity against alternatives, but emphasized the benefits of locked settings, session logs and NCAA acceptance for credits. "We are comparing it against another offering, not for next year because we have a 3-year contract. But we do want to continue to evaluate that against other products out there," Wills said.

Presenters stressed Student Success encompasses more than online courses: advocacy by assigned teachers, restorative behavior supports, outreach for attendance and a range of family-engagement events including board-game night and a movie-on-the-lawn scheduled for May 8. Patterson described the daily classroom routines and nonacademic supports she provides, from tracking progress visibly to arranging food and clothing resources with outreach staff. "If you walk by my classroom on a regular day, it's going to look students are working, they've got their headphones on, it's quiet, but there's so much more I do on the backside," she said.

Nut graf: District officials said the pared-down Student Success team is targeting the students most at risk of not graduating, relying on teacher-led classes and secured Edgenuity coursework to maintain academic integrity while offering credit-recovery and concept-recovery paths that can prevent F grades. The Board heard that the program contributed to raising the district's graduation statistics and that staff will continue to refine eligibility and monitoring.

Ending: Staff said they will return with additional data after more semesters of implementation; Board members signaled support for continued evaluation of the platform and for program-level metrics to track whether the smaller roster and targeted approaches continue reducing failures and improving graduation.