Superintendent outlines phased district vision and flags K–3 screener reliability

Superintendent (Speaker 3) opened the information agenda with a phased vision for the district and promised a concise monthly superintendent report (SMOR) to help the board track progress. "This first year, we're calling it phase 1," the superintendent said, describing Phase 1 as building culture and trust, Phase 2 as strengthening organizational effectiveness, and Phase 3 as aligning systems around teaching and learning. He thanked the Education Foundation for making roughly $44,000 in strategy grants available to teachers and principals and described the grants as both classroom- and system-level opportunities.

Board members and school staff spent the bulk of the presentation reviewing K–3 student achievement and universal screening data. Staff emphasized that the district is sharing launchpad/universal screening data collected three times a year to guide instruction rather than to declare final outcomes. "We do share that the Amira is a different assessment than we have been using. So it's new," said Speaker 2, reflecting concerns that a single, new data point can overstate problems if not viewed longitudinally.

Staff explained how they constructed a cohort of 105 students who were in the district from kindergarten through third grade; that cohort is intended to show year-to-year instruction and growth for a consistent group. At the school level, the Driggs Elementary representative (Speaker 4) reported K–3 enrollment of about 278 students (dual-immersion plus regular ed), and provided demographic details: “We have 53% Hispanic … our EL students are 32% and IEPs are about 12%.” Newtonian and Victor schools also gave brief demographic snapshots.

Several teachers and staff reported testing challenges with the Amira screener in October: technical problems prevented use of a nonverbal accommodation, and some classrooms experienced chaotic administration when teachers gave the test to the whole class. Staff said they have solicited vendor feedback, joined regional cohorts for implementation, and will modify January administration to pull smaller groups and use dividers so results are more reliable for students with intelligibility or language-disorder needs. "There is a nonverbal version of the assessment that was not available in October," staff said; they expect that accommodation to reduce bias for certain students when available.

The board discussed intervention strategies to address students identified as well below benchmark. Staff described MTSS tiers, daily intervention blocks (about 30 minutes), and targeted reading and math interventions. Driggs plans a partner tutoring program with ABC that will invite students for Friday tutoring beginning in January to target students near the tier-1/tier-2 boundary.

Board members asked staff to keep testing reliability and cohort methods under review and to return with clarified, digestible visuals (green/yellow/red lines, cohort and universal summaries) at the next report. The superintendent and data staff said the package is intended as a "launchpad" to surface follow-up questions rather than as a definitive accountability judgment.

The board did not take any formal action on assessments at this meeting; staff were directed to continue improving reliability, bring clarified reports to the board, and consider alternative high-quality assessments if January results remain problematic.