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Lincoln County Schools to add four grant-funded instructional coaches, district says
Summary
District instructional staff told the board that a Department of Education Impact Plus grant will fund two ELA and two math coaches for Lincoln County at no cost to the district; the coaches will work with teachers across schools and free existing coaches to focus on secondary grades.
Ms. Shortridge, speaking during the board's instructional leadership item, told members the district used data from a three-hour early-release session and follow-up professional learning day to identify common gaps in ELA and math and to guide summer planning and interventions.
She said the curriculum team reviewed Cambium benchmark data (and IXL in high school), color-coded recurring weak standards across schools and then used that evidence to structure professional development. "We took these weakest standards and I color coded them based on schools," she said, describing how the team identified items such as rhyming in kindergarten and carry-forward gaps in informational-text skills.
Those findings fed into a teaching model the district used in PD, including deconstructing standards and employing the Concrete–Representational–Abstract (CRA) approach for math. Ms. Shortridge said the county organized grade-band tables so teachers from different schools could develop shared strategies: "Third grade came to this table. Fourth grade came to this table. Fifth grade. So, it was across the county so that everybody's speaking a common language," she said.
On state support, Ms. Shortridge said the Department of Education's Impact Plus initiative will fund four instructional coaches for the county — "two ELA additional ELA coaches and two additional uh math coaches"—and that those positions appear sustainable and will not affect the district's staffing formula. She said the coaches "will be working with adults" — helping teachers (including long-term substitutes or uncertified staff) — and will allow existing coaches to concentrate more at the secondary level.
Board members confirmed the arrangement would serve Lincoln County schools. Ms. Shortridge said about 100 staff attended the morning session and that the curriculum team will use the documented patterns to develop supplemental resources and a summer planning agenda.
The district plans to incorporate cross-curricular texts (social studies and science) to help students generalize ELA and math skills and to use the new coaching capacity to support classroom instruction next school year.
