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Board hears $2.5M proposal to expand 'Rise with Reading' as trustees press for clearer survey participation data
Summary
District staff asked the board to use $2.5 million of undesignated general fund balance to expand literacy coaching, interventions and assessments; trustees pressed presenters for clearer parent participation rates after a drop in online responses.
Lee James, a district leader, asked the Horry County Board of Education on Oct. 6 to allocate $2.5 million of undesignated general fund balance to expand the Rise with Reading plan, citing needs for teacher training, targeted intervention programs and a Lexile assessment for high schools.
"This request supports the literacy instruction for all students in Horry County Schools," Lee James said, outlining items in the action packet that included professional development, intervention programs for struggling readers and materials for parent resource centers. He said the district presented the proposal at the September board retreat and that the funding would expand existing efforts shown to improve reading outcomes.
Board members and staff then reviewed results from the South Carolina School Climate Survey. Mr. Washburn, who presented the monitoring data, said parent satisfaction with school learning environments registered at about 90%, teacher satisfaction above 95% in major categories, and 91% of students reported feeling safe during the school day. He also reported there were 570 fewer parent online responses than the previous year and offered to provide longitudinal participation rates and raw-response context on request.
Trustees pressed for context on what those participation figures mean. "Do you have any historical data on that?" Chair Barnard asked. Trustee Pam Dawson said a quick calculation suggests roughly 6% parent participation if the district includes 48,000 students and 3,038 parent responses; she warned trustees that 5% is often treated as the lower bound of statistical meaningfulness. Mr. Washburn said he would provide the requested breakdowns and longitudinal comparisons.
Superintendent Jones and other members stressed the district’s intent to limit survey fatigue while making clear the board does act on survey results. "We look at these results, we make changes, we improve, we celebrate," the superintendent said, pledging to pull participation denominators and past-year comparators for trustees.
No final budget vote occurred at the Oct. 6 meeting; Lee James said the literacy funding request will be presented for business discussion and then as a business item at the board's second November meeting.
