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District unveils teacher toolbox, expands screeners as part of cohesive teaching-and-learning rollout
Summary
Dr. Heath told the Cherokee County School Board the district has finalized standards for 2025-26, completed a comprehensive review of adopted ELA and math materials, distributed resources to schools, launched initial professional development for 2,600+ staff, and will make a teacher "toolbox" available by Aug. 1 while expanding reading and math screeners through 10th grade.
Dr. Heath presented the Cherokee County School District's rollout of a "cohesive system of teaching and learning," tying the effort to Policy BAB and the district literacy policy (IFAD). He said the work centers on two core beliefs: that "all of our students are highly engaged and are capable of learning" and that staff are "trusted professionals" who must be given resources to raise student outcomes.
He outlined three components of the system — standards, instructional resources, and monitoring student learning. On standards, Dr. Heath noted the board approved customized CCSD standards for the 2025-26 school year and that teams have aligned those standards into teaching-and-learning maps (scope and sequence) for each grade and content area.
On instructional resources, he said the district revised policy IFAA to strengthen teacher input and implemented a multi-step adoption: "more than 800 teachers, leaders, community members, and parents" provided feedback on core resource options, and academics staff conducted a "comprehensive read" that reviewed "more than 250 individual resources and tens of thousands of pages" to identify items requiring instructional framing or additional teacher guidance. He described schools' May efforts to barcode, stage and distribute materials and emphasized that the adopted packs include teacher editions, intervention supports, enrichment materials and both print and digital student access.
Dr. Heath reported the district began pre-summer professional development on May 28, with "more than 2,600 teachers and staff members" attending across six sites; sessions included special education, gifted and ESOL staff and provided videos and optional online resources for summer use and further training at preplanning.
He previewed a teacher toolbox — a Canvas-based one-stop resource scheduled to provide, by Aug. 1, standards, learning targets, unit-aligned success criteria, page-level references to adopted materials, exemplar student work and unit-aligned science labs and primary sources for social studies. Dr. Heath described planned 2025-26 additions such as teacher videos and supports for specialized populations.
On monitoring student learning, Dr. Heath said CCSD will expand its reading and math screener from kindergarten-through-eighth grade to kindergarten-through-tenth grade and will pilot Orton-Gillingham supports for early readers so teachers and principals can use near-real-time data.
Board members asked clarifying questions about who is developing the toolbox; Dr. Heath said content coordinators and the instructional-resources team are leading the effort "in development with teachers" and that the district will "stay with the same" screening vendor while expanding grade coverage. The presentation concluded with staff noting continued summer and fall work to support implementation and data use.
Next steps: staff will finalize and publish the teacher toolbox by Aug. 1, continue professional development at preplanning and throughout the school year, and implement the expanded screener pilot and Orton-Gillingham work in 2025-26.
