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South Park Middle principal sets goals to raise reading and math proficiency, outlines interventions
Summary
Principal Martie O'Donnell told the board the school aims to raise reading proficiency from 41% to 50% and math from 42% to 53%, is providing targeted interventions for roughly 40 students at a time from an identified pool of about 100, and is expanding instructional support and SEL training for staff.
Principal Martie O'Donnell told the board about academic and social-emotional priorities at South Park Middle School, including numeric targets and a plan to rotate students through interventions.
O'Donnell said the school's goals are to increase reading proficiency from 41% to 50% and math proficiency from 42% to 53%. She described a plan to set "conditions for success" in classrooms by using monthly or six-week instructional focus cycles, using the Framework for Teaching as a common vocabulary, and deploying Instructional Support Teachers (ISTs) to provide biweekly grade-level support and push-in assistance.
On interventions, O'Donnell said the school has identified about 100 students who need extra support and is currently providing literacy and math interventions to 40 students at a time, with plans to rotate students in and out as they show progress. "Our plan is right now, we're gonna rotate about a 100 kids have been identified that need some more red level interventions. And currently, we're working on 40 right now, and we're gonna rotate through those students as fast as we can," she said.
O'Donnell also described efforts on social-emotional learning and school climate, including professional development on the district's social-emotional behavior continuum, tabletop exercises using actual incidents, a four-times-a-year 'dot survey' to measure teacher-student relationships, and a principal "roadshow" that puts the principal in classrooms to tailor messaging to grade levels.
A trustee asked whether the 40 students receiving interventions represented 40 total students; O'Donnell clarified the larger identified pool of roughly 100 students and said the school is building staff instructional capacity so more students can be served sooner. She said staffing and budget pressures influence how fast the school can expand intervention delivery.
The presentation concluded with O'Donnell thanking staff for early-year work on building relationships and engagement.
