Martie O'Donnell, principal of South Park Middle School, told the Board of Education on Oct. 14 about her first months at the school and outlined academic and social-emotional goals.

O'Donnell said the school aims to increase reading proficiency from 41% to 50% and to move math proficiency from 42% to 53%. She described a framework of regular classroom "look-fors" and instructional feedback, saying each six-week cycle will emphasize specific classroom practices: "In September we focused primarily on building relationships, universal expectations, routines, procedures and then teaching, reteaching, providing critical feedback to kids," she said.

The principal said she visited every classroom in her first month and provided feedback to 45 staff members. South Park uses instructional-support teachers (ISTs) who meet biweekly with grade-level staff and push into classrooms. O'Donnell said the school has identified about 100 students who need tiered interventions and is rotating roughly 40 students currently receiving literacy and math interventions: "Currently, we're working on 40 right now, and we're gonna rotate through those students as fast as we can," she said.

On safety and social-emotional learning, O'Donnell said staff are working through professional development that follows the district's social-emotional behavior continuum and that the school uses real incidents for tabletop exercises to practice responses. She also described a "roadshow" approach of visiting classrooms rather than speaking to the whole school at once to tailor messages by grade level.

Why it matters: The details outline how South Park plans to target instruction and supports for students who are behind grade level and describe the operational limits: the school aims to serve more students but is constrained by staffing and the need to build staff intervention skills.

No formal board action was recorded; the report was informational.