Belton Independent School District staff on Monday told the school board that beginning-of-year universal screeners show both areas of promise and areas needing focused support, and they described a multi-tiered approach to help teachers respond to student needs.

"The word might is really important because it's a screener," said Gabby Nino, a district teaching-and-learning staff member, describing the STAR Renaissance assessment the district used as a universal screener. Nino said the screener gives a quick "dipstick look" at students that signals where educators should dig deeper and provides both achievement scores and growth projections.

The presentation compared year-over-year grade-level snapshots (different groups of students in the same grade) with cohort measures (the same group of students across years). Nino said the district's STAR data indicate the third-grade cohort is on track to exceed district-set House Bill 3 targets for reading and math for June 2026; she warned, however, that STAR is a screener and requires follow-up diagnostic work.

Nino also highlighted two consistent concerns: greater apparent summer regression in fourth and seventh grades and staffing patterns. "In seventh grade . . . 64% of our teachers are new hires," she said, noting that many of those hires are new to Belton ISD and that the district is providing additional support to those campuses.

District staff pointed to several system-level supports intended to translate screening data into classroom action. Those include a district-wide scope-and-sequence, common formative assessments developed by grade-level teams, a shared spreadsheet-based data tracker that breaks student performance down to the TEKS (state standard) level, and scheduled "flex time" in master schedules for targeted intervention or enrichment.

"In 86% of classrooms, we saw that [two or more critical thinking elements] at the student level," Nino said of a fall observation collection that measures elements of critical thinking. She and other staff framed that observation data as encouraging but said they are emphasizing two elements in particular this year: students asking questions and evaluating arguments.

Principals and assistant principals are expected to use a campus-level walkthrough tracker. "Per our policy that we revised this summer, they have to have two formal walk throughs. Each teacher gets one in the fall, one in the spring. That's a little bit longer. It's a 15-minute walk through," a district administrator said, explaining the district's observation-and-coaching model. Staff said informal walkthrough frequency is expected to be higher and will be differentiated by teacher need.

Staff described a cadence of accountability that brings district leaders, principals and teacher teams together regularly. Teaching, Leading and Learning (TLL) meetings and monthly campus data reviews include classroom visits followed by action-focused coaching discussions. Staff said these routine touchpoints help identify implementation issues—for example, when an intervention tool was not being used correctly and a campus leader corrected the practice before it became a larger problem.

On curriculum, the district reported it adopted new elementary curriculum through fifth grade last year and has been supporting teachers with professional learning (reading academies and math academies). Staff said the district's scope-and-sequence and common planning expectations seek to reduce variability across classrooms while allowing flexibility when teachers need more time with particular concepts.

No formal board actions or votes were taken during the workshop; the session was an informational update and discussion.

District staff said the next steps include scheduled principal-level data meetings, campus visits tied to the TLL cadence, and continued coaching focused on the grade levels and campuses identified as priorities (staff cited seventh grade as a priority). Board members asked for additional information about teacher turnover patterns and said they wanted follow-up detail for specific campuses.

There being no further business, the workshop adjourned at 6:03 p.m.