Oak Park principals present school improvement plans centering focus cohorts and tier‑1 instructional practices

Leaders from Longfellow and Lincoln elementary schools presented school improvement logic models Tuesday night at the Oak Park ESD 97 Board of Education meeting, saying they are concentrating instructional and social‑emotional work on a district focal cohort so that improvements to core Tier‑1 practice benefit all students.

The two presentations outlined similar approaches: (1) identify a school focal cohort — at both sites the cohort includes Black students and often overlaps with multilingual learners, students with individualized education programs and students eligible for free or reduced‑price lunch — (2) use Universal Design for Learning and standards‑aligned Tier‑1 instruction to raise outcomes for that cohort, and (3) surface student voice and family engagement to shape interventions.

Why it matters: District staff said focusing resources on a small, defined cohort is intended to reduce persistent opportunity gaps by improving core instruction and school climate so that gains “scale up” across classrooms.

Longfellow Elementary Principal Amy Jefferson described a schoolwide…