District to pilot semester-based elementary report cards; staff to survey parents and teachers

District staff told the Education Operations Committee that a short-term committee of about 20 teachers had reviewed options for reporting student progress and recommended piloting a semester reporting system for elementary report cards.

"We landed in a spot where we'd like to, pilot, kind of a semester grading process at the elementary level, starting in the second semester," the report-card presenter said. The proposed approach would provide written report cards twice a year (end of semesters or second and fourth quarters) while preserving personal parent–teacher conferences at first and third quarter for that face-to-face connection.

The pilot would shift record-keeping days to allow teacher preparation time for semester reporting and would open grading windows so teachers — especially encore teachers who manage many students — can report standards-based progress more effectively. A parent communication and frequently asked questions document will be distributed as the pilot launches; parent and teacher surveys will be deployed after third-quarter conferences to gather feedback. Staff said they would reconvene the committee after spring break to review survey results and, if needed, form action teams for specific content areas such as ELA, math and encore subjects.

Board members who spoke supported aligning report-card content with curriculum and praised the plan to gather teacher and parent feedback during the pilot. Staff did not ask the committee for action at the meeting; the pilot will run second semester with return reporting planned for April–May.