Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Early Childhood topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Students perform; Francis Drake administrators outline preschool expansion and improvement goals
Summary
At a Leominster School Committee meeting, Francis Drake presenters and early childhood administrators highlighted student performances, reported preschool enrollments (Priest Street 154; Bennett 124; Lincoln 41), and set school-improvement targets including a two-year I‑Ready stretch-growth goal of 55% for students below grade level.
Francis Drake School leaders and early childhood administrators presented classroom updates, student performances and school-improvement goals at the Leominster School Committee meeting.
Ann Margret Mitchell, who identified herself as part of the Francis Drake administration, said the district’s early childhood programs currently enroll 154 students at Priest Street, 124 at Bennett and 41 at Lincoln Preschool, for a total of 319 students. “Our school never forgets to plan,” she told the committee, describing new classroom placements and building improvements including a new gas boiler, portables and playground fencing.
Melissa Phillips, introduced by the presenter as the administrator leading school planning work at Francis Drake, outlined three district-aligned goals for 2025–27: increase I‑Ready stretch growth, raise writing proficiency through professional development and PLCs, and deepen student engagement through content-specific vocabulary and higher-level questioning. “Our goal is that over the next two years we get 55 percent of the students who are currently in grade below grade level to meet their stretch growth,” Phillips said, noting that typical stretch-goal attainment is usually 25–35%.
The presentation included student performances and summer-reading projects: a fifth-grader played violin and several students read project summaries for the committee’s benefit. Administrators described early-childhood supports — tiered small-group instruction, weekly data meetings with interventionists and instructional leadership team walkthroughs — and emphasized social-emotional learning through Second Step lessons and specialized classroom greetings.
School leaders also reported early-childhood attendance and assessment snapshots. Administrators said year-to-date attendance for those programs is about 95.3 percent and that benchmarks such as DIBELS and I‑Ready are used to set and monitor goals; staff committed to continuing regular data meetings and to sharing benchmark data with the committee.
