Southview staff describe Building Assets Reducing Risks framework, new Benchmark curriculum and faster assessment data

Peter Thor and Amanda Peterson, Southview staff members, told the Marshall Public School District Board of Education that the school is in the third year of a Building Assets Reducing Risk (BAR) grant and is implementing the Benchmark literacy curriculum to align relationships, data and interventions.

"If anybody were to come to me and just say, Pete, what's BAR about? ... that's the first thing I would say, relationships," Peter Thor said, describing BAR's emphasis on student-to-student, student-to-staff and staff-to-staff relationships. He said BAR also requires regular data review to drive goals for attendance, behavior and state assessment performance.

The presentation said Southview received a three-year BAR grant totaling $240,000 (about $80,000 per year) that pays for an assigned coach, training and conference travel. Thor described professional learning communities for principals and coordinators and planned staff trainings: a full-day session on effective team meetings in January and a BAR session on trauma-informed practice in February.

Thor and Amanda Peterson described how BAR's structures—"small blocks" (weekly team meetings), "community connect" meetings involving administrators, SEL staff, the school nurse and the SRO, and larger "big blocks" that function as tier 2 teams—are intended to surface student needs and move cases to tiered supports when necessary. Thor said the school aims to add county workers to Community Connect meetings to coordinate truancy-related cases while noting privacy constraints when outside agencies attend brief portions of those meetings.

The presenters said Southview also piloted and adopted the Benchmark literacy curriculum. Amanda Peterson said Benchmark is a K–6 program that integrates reading and writing with science and social studies content, provides student activity booklets and online teacher resources, and builds routines and vocabulary across years. "The utopian dream of Benchmark is we don't need small groups because all of our tier 1 kids can do the work," she said, while acknowledging the program is more rigorous and required schedule adjustments.

To accommodate Benchmark lessons, Southview extended core instructional time to about 110 minutes for reading and math; presenters said that time is broken into shorter instructional segments, small groups and stations rather than long sustained whole-class instruction.

Presenters reported the district moved to online interim assessments this year (M-class/DIBELS, Amplify math, and CAPTI for grades 4–12 under the Minnesota Read Act). When asked whether results arrive quickly, Thor said, "once the student is done and they submit it, we get the data very fast." He and Peterson said the new assessments break results into sub-skills (decoding, morphology, vocabulary, place value) and, together with Benchmark, allow staff to place students in targeted interventions without needing additional diagnostic tests.

Instructional coach Sam Downing was named as leading progress monitoring and intervention placement using the new data. Thor said the new results have helped teachers form flexible intervention groups and that CAPTI and Amplify include resources teachers can use to pull grade-appropriate interventions.

Thor said BAR-funded conference attendance and online materials have spread U-time (relationship-building) activities across the building; staff began with pilot groups and moved to schoolwide U-time activities in year two. He described classroom displays and student goal-setting activities intended to connect students to at least one adult in the building.

The presenters said initial implementation has required extra work for teachers and administrators but described positive early reactions from staff and students and expressed hope that the combination of BAR structures, faster assessment data and Benchmark curriculum will improve attendance, behavior and assessment outcomes over time.

Questions at the board meeting focused on assessment turnaround and how data are used for grouping. Thor and Peterson emphasized that assessment results are being used immediately to form flexible EL, Title and intervention groups and that progress monitoring occurs on multiweek cycles for students below benchmark.

The presenters remained after the meeting to lead a work session for board members on U-time activities.