Northmor implements strategy for mandated assessments

By Randa Wagner -

The new state-mandated Read­ing Diag­nos­tic Assess­ment that could result in thou­sands of Ohio third grade stu­dents being held back at the end of the year was a pri­mary topic at the Sep­tem­ber 20 North­mor School Board meeting.

“We are man­dated by the Ohio Leg­is­la­ture to pass this pol­icy,” Super­in­ten­dent Dr. Brent Winand said. “It will require, ulti­mately, stu­dents who do not per­form at an estab­lished level in read­ing when they’re in the third grade to be retained. It com­mits us to putting chil­dren into tiers and address­ing their needs based on where they’re at.”

Winand said he received an email from thir­teen super­in­ten­dents in north­ern Ohio who are con­tact­ing their leg­is­la­tors and ‘essen­tially say­ing, ‘it seems to us pre­haps it’s appro­pri­ate for par­ents, teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors to make deci­sions regard­ing whether a child should be retained rather than leg­is­la­tors mak­ing a blan­ket statement.’”

K-4 Prin­ci­pal Becky Oliver reported third grade stu­dents would be get­ting ready to take their read­ing achieve­ment test for fall on Octo­ber 2.

Asst. Prin­ci­pal Amanda Albert said she has been work­ing on data con­nected to the Third Grade Guarantee.

“All stu­dents grades K-3 must be assessed in read­ing diag­nos­tic by Sept. 30,” she explained. “They are assessed on mul­ti­ple majors. Kinder­garten through third grade was done the first week of school and that would not have been pos­si­ble with­out Peggy Webb, Sarah Skel­ton, Dee Yunker and the whole Title I group.”

What they were able to do with the data, she explained, was take a look at all their grade lev­els and rank them by the 10th, 20th, 50th, 70th, and 90th per­cent of the grade level.

“Stu­dents on the lower level are tar­geted for the Third Grade Guar­an­tee in the third grade,” she said. “So, we have good data to back up what we’re doing. We’ve also moved to go ahead and get the fifth and sixth grade assessed using the same major in read­ing com­pre­hen­sion. Then what we’ll have is a K-6 com­plete flow of data.”

“They’re call­ing it ‘on track’ or ‘not on track,’ and we have drafted a let­ter to let the par­ents know this infor­ma­tion,” said Prin­ci­pal Oliver.

“If the school year were over tomor­row, all these chil­dren on the lower level (of her chart) would be retained,” added Asst. Prin­ci­pal Albert. “Chances are the ‘cut’ score this year on the OEAA for third grade is going to be a 390, next year they’ll raise the score to 392 and each year it will raise until it reaches 400.”

Oliver said many fac­tors can go into the score: maybe a child is not a good test taker, per­haps they don’t feel well that day, or other factors.

“We’ll have to send writ­ten noti­fi­ca­tion to all the par­ents of K-3 stu­dents begin­ning this year,” said Albert, “so even if you have a kinder­gartener exhibit­ing a read­ing defi­ciency, you’ll receive a let­ter say­ing ‘if this con­tin­ues, they may be retained.’ This year sec­ond graders will fall under all of the man­dates of this bill.”

Winand said the third grade guar­an­tee has pos­i­tive com­po­nents, requir­ing a com­mit­ment of 90 min­utes a day for the chil­dren at risk.

“But I’m not totally con­vinced when the leg­is­la­tors next year have a lot of chil­dren retained, and then prin­ci­pal and par­ents come to us and start talk­ing about their child being retained, it does seem appro­pri­ate to give them the legislator’s phone num­ber and say, ‘this was their deci­sion and we’re sim­ply fol­low­ing the man­date they created.’”

Winand said per­haps when the politi­cians start to per­ceive the result as ‘votes gained or lost,’ they may want to turn the respon­si­bil­ity back to the par­ents and teach­ers and principals.

“No edu­ca­tor stands in oppo­si­tion to the idea that chil­dren should move on if they can’t read,” Winand said. “But you have to take into con­sid­er­a­tion the growth they’ve made per­haps from kinder­garten through the third grade. They may have made great progress from where they started from and, in that case, it may not make sense to auto­mat­i­cally retain them.”

A Title I Pro­gram Par­ent Involve­ment Prac­tice was handed out. Winand explained the prac­tice is not a pol­icy ‘in the books’ but schools that are recip­i­ents of Title I funds are required to com­mit to and pass a pol­icy, pro­mot­ing and encour­ag­ing two way com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the school and fam­i­lies. The pro­gram pro­vides spe­cific oppor­tu­ni­ties for par­ents to par­tic­i­pate in activ­i­ties in the school and pro­motes the idea that par­ents will be a part­ner in their chil­drens’ education.

Prin­ci­pals’ Reports

Prin­ci­pal Oliver reported the school year got off to a good start and acknowl­edged K-6 Asst. Prin­ci­pal Amanda Albert’s role in the smooth start. She reported stu­dent num­bers are up to 592 this year, with 80 kinder­garten stu­dents, 96 first graders (requir­ing five first grade class­rooms); 62 sec­ond graders in 3 classes; 81 third graders and 84 fourth graders.

“Our open house had good turnout,” she said. “We’re going to try to have it the night before school starts next year. A lot of peo­ple expressed their con­cern that it works out so much bet­ter to bring the sup­plies in [at that time].”

New first grade teacher Amanda Rig­gle was in atten­dance and intro­duced to the board.

Mid­dle School Prin­ci­pal Den­nis Ervin intro­duced new fifth grade teacher Katie Clark, and men­tioned new sixth grade math teacher Jared Thew, mul­ti­ple dis­abil­i­ties teacher Jeff Hub­schman and Jeff Moore, who was a sixth grade math teacher last year, and moved to the seventh/eighth grade lan­guage arts this year.

Ervin announced there are 101 fifth graders, 86 sixth graders, 95 sev­enth graders and 98 eighth graders.

High School Prin­ci­pal Chad Red­mon intro­duced Deb Conti, new Fam­ily Con­sumer Sci­ence Teacher. Red­mon noted the high school has 24 stu­dents less than they did last year, with 83 fresh­man, 106 sopho­mores, 95 juniors and 82 seniors this school year.

Red­mon said atten­dance for the new student/freshman ori­en­ta­tion was good, with about three quar­ters of those stu­dents show­ing up to hear about expec­ta­tions, what their high school expe­ri­ence will be like and how to be suc­cess­ful dur­ing those years.

New Busi­ness

The board accepted the dona­tion of a stove from Deb Conti to the Multi Hand­i­cap Classroom.

After exam­i­na­tion of exist­ing school bus routes, time sched­ules, stu­dent res­i­dence loca­tions, school loca­tions and avail­able school con­veyances and upon estab­lish­ing that pri­vate school stu­dents are eli­gi­ble to receive trans­porta­tion in accor­dance with Sec­tion 3327.01 of the ORC, the board declared that such ser­vice by school con­veyance is imprac­ti­cal and agrees to pay the par­ent or legal guardian of said pupil, in lieu of pro­vid­ing such ser­vice, an amount not to exceed the aver­age state cost per pupil for trans­porta­tion dur­ing the school year.

An out of state trip for the North­mor FFA to the National FFA Con­ven­tion in Indi­anapo­lis, Indi­ana Octo­ber 24th – 26th was approved. They will be shar­ing a char­ter bus with the Clear Fork and Crestview FFA.

A per­sonal ser­vices con­tract with Amber Smith for trans­porta­tion of a spe­cial needs child to Mans­field City Schools at a rate of $20.00 per day for the 2012–2013 school year was approved as well as a con­tract with the Mor­row County Trans­porta­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive (MCTC) for the pur­pose of trans­port­ing pre-school stu­dents as needed. North­mor preschool stu­dents attend classes in the Whet­stone build­ing in Mt. Gilead and are picked up in the ele­men­tary bus routes in the morn­ing and trans­ported home mid­day, when after­noon stu­dents must be picked up. Supt. Winand said some­times it is more prac­ti­cal to use MCTC on an as-needed basis.

The board approved a per­sonal ser­vices con­tract with Angie Rock­hold for trans­porta­tion of a spe­cial needs child to Card­ing­ton Lin­coln Local Schools at a rate of $30.00 per day for the 2012–2013 school year.

Also approved was a con­tract with the North Cen­tral Ohio Edu­ca­tion Ser­vice Cen­ter to pro­vide audi­ol­ogy ser­vices for spe­cial needs stu­dents. This con­tract is on an as needed basis. The rate of com­pen­sa­tion is $77.00 per hour and with a travel com­pen­sa­tion of 45 cents per mile.

A con­tract with Step by Step Acad­emy, Inc. to pro­vide ser­vices for spe­cial needs stu­dents. The con­tracts are not to exceed $3,333 per month, per stu­dent was approved and can­not exceed $40,000 per year per student.

Superintendent’s Employ­ment Recommendations

The fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions were approved for the 2012–2013 school year:

Deb Conti for the posi­tion of Fam­ily and Con­sumer Sci­ence Teacher; accept the res­ig­na­tion of Mau­ria Rader as a dou­ble route bus dri­ver effec­tive the end of the 2011–2012 school year; Chris Wright to serve as a dou­ble route bus dri­ver for a one year con­tract; Laura Smith to tutor a home bound spe­cial needs stu­dent at a rate of $20 per hour for up to five hours per week. This con­tract is retroac­tive to Sep­tem­ber 6, 2012 and will exist for the 2012–2013 school year; Cor­rect the con­tract of Jared Thew to rec­og­nize his Master’s Degree sta­tus; Kim Hes­sey to trans­port preschool stu­dents to Mt. Gilead Pre School Mon­day through Thurs­day at a rate of $11.00 per hour, one hour per day; Brit­tany Wenger as Var­sity Assis­tant Girls’ Bas­ket­ball Coach; Bren­dan Gwirtz as JV Girls’ Bas­ket­ball Coach; Matt Wise­man as a Junior High Girls’ Bas­ket­ball Coach; Kevin Ruhl as a Junior High Girls’ Bas­ket­ball Coach; BJ Trainer as Win­ter Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Coach; BJ Trainer as Spring Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Coach; Doug Wag­ner as Head Boys’ Track Coach; Mark Yaussy as Head Girls’ Track Coach; Buck Work­man as Head Base­ball Coach; Shayne Yeater as Head Soft­ball Coach; Cindy Shep­herd as Mohi­can Out­door School Advi­sor; Kara Sut­ton as Mohi­can Out­door School Advi­sor; Jared Thew as Mohi­can Out­door School Advi­sor at a rate of $50.00 per night; Renee Ward as Mohi­can Out­door School Advi­sor at a rate of $50.00 per night; Tina Hile as Year­book Advi­sor; Dana Ruth as Show Choir Advi­sor; LaN­eta Wertz as Assis­tant Show Choir Advi­sor; Karole Skidmore-Roth as Stu­dent Coun­cil Advi­sor; Lisa Ked­die as Senior Class Advi­sor; Brenda Pat­ter­son as co-Junior Class Advi­sor; Mar­cie Whited as co-Junior Class Advi­sor; BJ Trainer as Sopho­more Class Advi­sor; Kay Clouse as Fresh­man Class Advi­sor; Cindy Frye as National Honor Soci­ety Advi­sor; Nicole Detwiler as a sub­sti­tute sec­re­tary, aide, cafe­te­ria worker and cus­to­dian; Hope Lacy as a sub­sti­tute sec­re­tary, aide, cafe­te­ria worker and cus­to­dian; Kim­berly Hil­dreth as a sub­sti­tute sec­re­tary, aide and cafe­te­ria worker; rec­og­nize Kel­lie Jo Wright as a march­ing band vol­un­teer assis­tant and Russ Mont­gomery as vol­un­teer bowl­ing coach.

All con­tracts pend­ing com­ple­tion of all employ­ment requirements.

The next Board Meet­ing will be Thurs­day, Octo­ber 18th at 7:30 p.m. in the North­mor Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing room.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Oct 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.