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Staff recommends CommonLit 360 as Lakeville’s 9–12 ELA core resource; board to consider at next meeting
Summary
District teaching staff recommended CommonLit 360 as the core ELA resource for grades 9–12 after multi‑year review, teacher field tests and a month‑long community review. Implementation costs were estimated and staff said supplemental novel selections will be curated by a selection committee and returned to the board for approval.
Lakeville Public School District teaching staff told the school board at a March 10 work session they recommend adopting CommonLit 360 as the district’s core English language arts resource for grades 9–12.
Tracy Brovald, executive director of teaching and learning, and Natalie Nelson, secondary literacy coordinator, described a standards‑aligned adoption process shaped by Policy 606 that included vendor evidence review (ED/IES reports), multi‑year field testing beginning in 2024, teacher piloting, and a community review period in December. Nelson said teachers who field‑tested CommonLit 360 reported that the platform provides a broad collection of texts, structured unit plans, assessment tools that allow frequent progress checks, teacher guides, and integration with Google Docs and classroom workflows.
Staff outlined estimated costs and implementation steps: a three‑year CommonLit 360 licensing estimate of roughly $60,000, an initial $87,000 allocation next fiscal year for whole‑class and choice novels to build a vetted repository, about $5,300 for vendor consultant professional development, and about $50,000 for teacher release time and alignment work — a planning total staff cited near $202,000 for the transitional work and local supplementation. Brovald said the district will sequence adoption so secondary teachers can do alignment this spring and summer while preparing for state training required under the READ Act.
Board members asked how the resource correlates to standardized outcomes. Staff said many Minnesota districts are still in their first year of adoption and long‑term statewide test correlations are not yet available; internal field tests produced promising short‑term growth on classroom measures (one pilot teacher with 27 students showed most students improved on interim assessments). Staff emphasized that curriculum adoption is one component of student growth and requires ongoing professional development, pacing, and system supports.
Brovald and staff clarified that the immediate action staff will request is approval of the CommonLit 360 platform as the 9–12 core resource; a separate novel selection committee will curate a list of print whole‑class and choice novels that will be returned to the board for approval. The CommonLit 360 recommendation will be placed on the next regular board meeting agenda for formal consideration; staff agreed to provide the board with scope‑and‑sequence documents and the list of platform texts ahead of that vote.
What happens next: staff will bring the CommonLit 360 approval request and supporting materials to the next board meeting; a novel selection committee will develop supplemental lists of novels for later board approval.
