Board hears district's PLC plan: weekly PLTs, CKLA rollout K'5 and a new flexible learning block

District administrators told the Board of Education on Tuesday that Northport-East Northport is expanding its Professional Learning Community (PLC) work, rolling out the Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum K'5 and reorganizing elementary schedules to add a daily flexible learning block for intervention and extension.

Assistant superintendent and PLC presenter Dr. Bridal said the district is partnering with Solution Tree to develop PLCs as a sustained, teacher-led process for identifying essential standards, designing common formative assessments and responding with targeted interventions or extensions. "The PLC is based upon everything that you see up here. So we have the 3 big ideas, a focus on learning, a collaborative culture, and result orientation," Bridal said.

District plans presented at the meeting included: - PLC cadence: Professional learning teams (PLTs) are to meet at least every Monday after school, with additional in-day collaboration where schedules allow. PLTs will use repeated cycles of learning targets, common formative assessments (CFAs) and data analysis to decide interventions or enrichment. - Curriculum and assessment: The district is fully implementing CKLA for grades K'5 this year and intends to use common formative assessments to inform instruction and interventions rather than to increase high-stakes testing. - Elementary schedule changes: The elementary school day is restructured into longer blocks (hour-long blocks built from 15-minute increments) to increase time for CKLA and math and to provide a daily flexible learning block. The district described the flexible block as a period for targeted small-group intervention and enrichment while keeping students in their home buildings. - Investigate/GAT support: A district "investigate" (GAT) teacher will rotate through all four elementary buildings to provide weekly specialized instruction and to support teachers in daily enrichment and flexible-grouping strategies. - Professional development: The district offered a wide range of summer and early-year professional learning (53 sessions) and has held administrator and teacher orientation to prepare staff for PLC practices.

Why it matters: District leaders tied the PLC work to board priorities of improving literacy outcomes and the use of common assessments. Multiple trustees asked how the PLC approach maintains teacher autonomy while creating shared expectations; presenters described a "loose-tight" approach: teachers are required to collaborate and use CFAs, but they retain discretion over instructional choices and how to meet students' needs.

Trustees asked practical questions about scheduling, contract time and inclusion of special-area teachers. Bridal and other presenters said the Monday meetings use time already negotiated in the teacher contract and that special-area teachers (art, music, physical education) will focus PLT work on supports such as academic vocabulary, nonfiction writing and social-emotional learning rather than trying to replicate core-subject instruction.

Trustee Donna praised the model as a way to make collaboration more efficient and said she expected new teachers to adapt through orientation and mentoring. Presenters said PLC implementation will continue to evolve over several years, with 6'12-week cycles for CFAs and iterative adjustments based on data.

Ending: Administrators said they will return to the board with plans that tie PLC cycles and CFAs to district goals (literacy and Panorama social-emotional measures) and to an updated teacher-evaluation (APPR) framework that district stakeholders are revising. The board scheduled follow-up discussions and an expected contract consideration on a separate energy/performance item for Sept. 17.