Cumberland district reports overall four‑star rating; high school returns to four stars after metric change

Mr. DeMana, a district staff member, told the committee the states accountability system assigns building report‑card ratings based on a set of achievement and growth metrics, absenteeism and other measures. "We had 2 5 star schools, we had 3 4 star schools, 2 3 star schools, and 1 2 star school," he said.

He said the system uses the lowest submetric to set a buildings reported star rating and that recent changes to the formula, including adjustments for multilingual learners, affected several scores. "One of the things the state has tried to fix...the multilingual learner subpopulation has been a population that drove a lot of those 2 star ratings in the state," he said, and the formula tweaks produced a positive shift for Cumberland.

Committee members asked for clarification about the high schools score. Mr. DeMana said the high school had been driven to a 2 by that single measure last year but that the adjusted metric returned the high school to a 4‑star rating, consistent with its prior performance.

Dr. Thornton framed the results as a planning tool: the district will use the accountability data and conversations with RIDEs data team to inform school strategic plans and targeted improvement work.

On enrollment and funding, Dr. Thornton reported that state aid forecasting and enrollment measures had been favorable. He said October 1 counts and March 1 counts are the states measuring dates; Cumberlands October count was 5,047 and the district has gained 29 students since that date. He said the district is forecasting about $1.9 million in state aid for Cumberland this year and cautioned that last years budget used a substantial fund balance, so the district will consider enrollment-driven revenue carefully in budget planning.

The presentation and follow‑up were discussion only; no committee action was taken on the accountability or enrollment reports at the meeting.