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New Britain rolls out year‑long K–5 standards‑based report card and community engagement plan

New Britain School District Board of Education · October 7, 2025
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Summary

The board heard a detailed presentation on the district's new K'5 standards‑based report cards, a year‑long teacher professional development plan and three community forums to help parents interpret the new 1–4 scoring.

Miss Velasquez described the New Britain School District's planned year‑long rollout of standards‑based report cards for kindergarten through fifth grade, including multi‑language two‑page summaries, a short informational video and three community forums scheduled for Oct. 22, Nov. 5 and Nov. 19. Miss Velasquez said the district's communications office produced posters and videos and that teachers will use professional development time to calibrate how they collect evidence to assign 1–4 ratings on each standard.

Superintendent Dr. Gasper told the board the change is intended to clarify student progress on critical grade‑level standards and to support teacher collaboration. "A 2 means you are progressing," Dr. Gasper said, explaining the district's expectation that a 2 indicates students are on a trajectory to proficiency by the end of the year. He and Miss Velasquez both stressed the implementation is a multi‑step process: the report card is one lever among teacher PD, evidence collection and principal support.

Board members asked for detail on how teachers will determine the difference between a 3 and a 4 and how the district will ensure consistency. Miss Velasquez said grade‑level teacher teams will meet during professional development to agree on the pieces of evidence (classwork, assessments, reading samples) they will collect for each standard.

The district's communications plan calls for materials in Spanish and Arabic and automated translations for families whose preferred language is set in PowerSchool; staff said translated attachments may be limited by available document translations and urged administrators not to attach non‑translatable PDFs in mass notifications. The communications team also said Ukrainian translations would be available for the community forum materials and that translations into other languages may follow based on staff capacity.

Officials said the first parent‑facing report cards are expected in early December and that the plan will be revisited after the first year of implementation to refine standards and reporting language.