Today loomed large for Superintendent John Heim and the Emporia board of education. By the end of the day, after months of guessing for budget purposes, they will have a good estimate of the number of students who will attend classes here in 2008-09.
The official total of full-time equivalency students will not be known until Sept. 20, when attendance figures must be reported to the state. The more FTE students the district has, the more money it will receive from the state of Kansas.
Whether the closing of Tyson Fresh Meats’ slaughter division and the elimination of one processing shift — and the subsequent migration of Tyson families to other plants — affects attendance significantly has caused school administration and board members to rely more heavily on estimates as they prepared the budget for the coming year.
Beyond budget concerns, however, Heim has emphasized that no matter what the numbers reveal, educating the students remains the core mission of the district.
Heim said that a board retreat this month brought discussion and decisions on the focus for the coming school year. Three issues will have priority.
Dealing with No Child Left Behind and Adequate Yearly Progress issues will continue to be a priority, Heim said.
The Response to Intervention (RTI) and Professional Learning Communities, major components of the District Improvement Plan, are showing successes for the students, and will be continue as educators try to help students achieve at higher levels in reading and math.
This year will be the second of a new reading series for students at the elementary level.
“I think teachers will have an easier time with that curriculum,” Heim said. “It’s difficult when you implement a new series. ... The longer you use the series, the more sense it makes to the students and the easier it is for our teachers.”
The district uses “Literacy First” at the secondary level, to help students with their skills in both learning to read and understanding content.
“It provides some strategies for teachers to teach their kids, and also some strategies that teachers can use to help,” he said.
District administration and the school board also have a role in the coming year.
“The other one was the enrollment and our budget problems, which hasn’t been really part of our strategic plan or our District Improvement Plan, but we feel like it’s something we need to do to stay ahead,” Heim said.
Communications also will take on a more important role in the new school year.
“What the board talked about was trying to improve communication with our parents, trying to improve communication with staff, trying really to improve communication between board members as well,” Heim said. “Those are the main constituency groups.”
A focus will be on how to communicate more effectively with minority parents and community, to reach people who may not speak English and to get them to participate in school, he said.
The district recently was notified that it had met AYP for the 2007-08 school year, a fact that cheered Heim and bolstered district confidence that the teaching-and-learning process was coming under control.
“I feel pretty good about where we are right now, with our scores,” Heim said. “I think we’ll continue to improve, so I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll continue to show the improvement that we need to.”
And while the focus is on scoring well in math and reading, Heim said that other subjects in the curriculum — including physical education and the arts — will continue to complement the focus areas.
“Those all support learning in different ways,” he said. “Those are an important part of the process. They contribute to how kids’ brains develop and how they learn, too.”