Abel says summer school helps
Performance Based Budgeting to begin
By Bobbi Mlynar
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Reports dominated the agenda Wednesday evening for the Emporia board of education meeting. The session was held at Emporia High School, after a dinner and meeting with the EHS StuCo members.
Associate Superintendent George Abel reported on improvements shown by summer school students, according to Measures of Academic Performance tests.
“We’re proud to report we had slightly over 50 percent of the students participating in summer school that either held their own … or they actually improved their scores over that time,” Abel said. “So, we feel good about that.”
Abel said that the students who most-needed summer school were offered the opportunity to attend, up to the maximum number of students that could be accommodated by the teachers available.
Summer school, he said, is essential for the academically needy students to maintain or improve their performances, rather than lose or forget skills without classes over the summer.
“There’s lots of research that says many kids, in fact most kids, are going to lose learning over the summer,” Abel said. “Those kids that are going to lose the most are your most-needy students, as far as learning.”
A total of 101 students enrolled in the reading classes, and 15 who had been identified as needing summer school did not attend. The mathematics classes had 120 students enrolled, and 22 who were identified as needing help but did not attend.
Some students were not able to attend because of extended family vacations, spending time with divorced parents who do not live in this area, or other reasons.
Abel said the district had been able to compare the scores of students who attended summer school and those who did not.
More than half of the summer school group showed improved MAP scores in mathematics from kindergarten through eighth grade, according to results provided by Abel. Among the group that needed to attend summer school but could not, slightly more than one-third of the students improved.
Reading scores from the summer-school group showed almost 38.5 percent as improveing and almost 13 percent showing no change in skills. Slightly over 46 percent of the students showed a decrease in skills.
“The reading gap gets huge once students get up past primary grades,” he said. “Trying to close that gap is a long, slow process. It compounds itself as the students get behind, and it compounds each year.”
Board members also heard a report from Assistant Superintendent Susan Hernandez on the Performance Based Budgeting process that began in the fall and will culminate with reviews by the district PBB team. Four meetings are planned, beginning on Jan. 31 and ending next month.
Hernandez said that the PBB approach to budgeting has helped the district contain costs in recent years.
Conversations first are held with administrators and school personnel about needs of the individual buildings or departments. A district-wide plan is formed after the common themes are identified, then parents and community members become involved in the discussions with building principals. Input also is solicited from site councils and parent-teacher organizations.
The committees discuss needs for individual schools and help find ways to stay within the budget guidelines. If a committee decides the school and its students need a specific change or improvement, for example, the committee also must look for ways to reduce other areas of the building’s budget to pay for the improvement.
“We’ve said, ‘We can do without some things because it’s so important that we have these other things to make it work better,’” Hernandez said.
Hernandez helps guide committees through the budgeting process by providing information about funds available and anticipated cost increases, such as utilities. She also gives them figures for fixed or mandated costs, such as Social Security, workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance.
Other divisions within the district, through their research and recommendations, provide auxiliary information that helps in the decision-making processes, she said. The District Improvement Plan gave an overall view of where the district was going and what would be needed at each school; data about student achievements in each school also proved useful in determining what types of personnel, programs, or equipment might be needed to help move the students forward in their educations.
“It’s all integrated. Budgeting isn’t separated from everything else we do with kids,” Hernandez said. “It’s all part of the same thing.”
Board President Grant Riles introduced teachers Heather Caswell and Andy Battenfield to recognize their recent professional achievements.
Battenfield, a Hopkins Star Performer Award winner this year, was named 2007 Outstanding Young Professional by the Kansas Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance this fall.
Caswell completed certification for literacy in early and middle childhood education from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She also received her master’s degree in December from Kansas State University in Manhattan.
The board met in executive session for 15 minutes to discuss contract negotiations. After they returned to open session, they went into a 10-minute executive session to discuss non-classified personnel. They took no action on either matter.
Among other items on the agenda, the board approved:
-- a $30,000 consulting agreement with Linda Trujillo to oversee Project ASSIST (Assisting Students to Succeed in a Second Language and Transitions in Life) and to ensure that expected outcomes are met in the first year. The contract began Dec. 1, 2007, and will end April 30, 2008, according to documents provided by the school district.
-- approved selling 20 clamshell and 20 white iBook Apple Macintosh laptops on eBay.