By Deseray McKinzy
Watson Chapel School District held its monthly meeting Tuesday evening at their central office and discussed several objectives on their agenda and also hired one new staff member. The agenda began with a presentation from a member of the department of education Ginny Stroud who is in charge of the Every Student Succeeds Act Funding (ESSA) from the 1003 school improvement grant.
This funding is to implement programs for underperforming subgroups in Watson Chapel School District with data that emphasizes percentage growth rates focusing on literacy, reading, and math. This is the second year that ESSA has worked with Watson chapel after beginning in the 2018-19 school year with the ultimate goal being to enhance the feedback readiness for teachers and create improvement to increase annual growth curves for student performance.
Strout also gave the most recent percentages of students meeting the percentage level needed for that grade level based on ACT ASPIRE test results. Although test score improvements are improving at small rates the district reached its goal of having 95% of students taking the ACT ASPIRE test and have data to continue to improve test scores.
Superintendent Dr. Jerry Guess elaborates on continuing into the second year of assistance from coaches that the district is receiving while collaborating with ESSA,
The board also discussed how COVID-19 contributed to their efforts to get ahead of the current improvement needed in the number of students meeting essential core subject percentages.
The board reported that 800 plus students participated in virtual classrooms this school year and is limiting this access to only 50 students for K-6 who meet the need requirement for virtual learning for the 2021-22 school year.
Dr. Guess addressed some of the board members concerns in regards to what students will have access to virtual learning,
The school board also addressed the Watson Chapel High School graduation rate which is currently at 81% which is a 10% drop from last year’s statistics. Despite this, the District is graduating over 100 students on Tuesday beginning with a parade at 8 am with commencement later that evening at the convention center at 7 p.m.
