School system makes the grade, but two schools on target list

Bedford County Board of Education, meeting Thursday night, continued its discussion of the adequate yearly progress (AYP) results for local schools for the last school year.

School Superintendent Ed Gray made a presentation of school-by-school results.

The school system as a whole met its AYP goals.

Community Middle School and Cascade High School failed to meet the state's requirements and were placed on the state's target list for improvement.

The two schools which had been on the target list last year, Central High School and Harris Middle School, made improvement this year and will go off the target list if they can meet their goals next year. Thomas Intermediate School was placed on the target list, but its conversion this fall into a K-5 magnet school makes direct year-to-year comparisons meaningless and it should go off the target list once its new student population has been tested next spring.

The AYP program, which is tied in to the federal No Child Left Behind act, sets goals for a certain number of students to be proficient or advanced in specific subject areas. The goals apply not only to a school or school system as a whole, but also to particular subgroups. A school might have a passing grade in its overall population, but if it fails to meet the goal for one particular subgroup, that's enough to place the school on the target list.

The subgroups are as follows:

* White

* Hispanic

* African-American

* Asian / Pacific Islander

* Economically disadvantaged

* Students with disabilities

* Students with limited English proficiency

A subgroup is only counted towards a school's target status if there are at least 45 students in the subgroup. If a school had only 10 Asian / Pacific Islander students, for example, a low grade in that subgroup would not result in that school being placed on the target list. But Gray said the school system still sees any subgroup failure as a bad thing and wants to have a passing grade in every subgroup.

High schools are measured not only by test results but by graduation rate, which is the specific factor that caused Cascade to be placed on the target list.

Community Middle School failed to make its overall AYP goals, in addition to failing to meet the goals for most of its subgroups. School board members said the opening of the new Community High School, separating the high school from the middle school, should have a positive impact.

Many schools struggled to make their AYP goals in the "students with disabilities" subgroup and were saved only by that group being smaller than 45 for a particular school or grade level. Gray said the schools are caught between two different educational programs. The traditional special education program, IDEA, calls for a special education student's curriculum to be tailored to that student's needs. But No Child Left Behind requires that those students be tested on the same content as their classmates. Those two concepts sometimes seem in conflict with each other, say officials.

The school system responded to the target status of SCHS and Harris last year by recruiting "instructional coaches" to help advise teachers throughout the school system.

"They have just made a major difference," said the school system's technology supervisor, Joan Gray. Kay Prince has worked at Harris, while Karen Cox and Jan Hall work with the three high schools, and Carol Smith and Kim Vernon work with all of the elementary schools. Joan Gray said the instructional coaches have been well-received by most teachers and that their input has helped teachers do their jobs more effectively.

In response to a comment by school board member Glenn Forsee, Ed Gray agreed that AYP is "a snapshot, not a portrait" of school system effectiveness and achievement. Forsee asked what the school board could do to support teachers as they attempt to meet AYP goals going forward. Ed Gray said the school board is already doing what it needs to by supporting the school program in general. The board also directed that a letter be written on its behalf to the faculties at SCHS and Harris commending them for their improvement.

Bids awarded

In other discussion Thursday, the school system awarded a number of bids:

* Ferrellgas, which Ed Gray identified as the low bidder, was chosen to provide propane.

* Shelbyville Lumber was awarded the bid for paint. The company was the low bidder on the interior paint used most often by the school system.

* Wholesale Supply Group, another low bidder, was awarded the bid for light bulbs.

* Low bidder Ferguson Enterprises was awarded the bid for filters.

* Bennett Truck Transport was awarded the bid for relocating a portable classroom from Community Elementary to Community High School, where it will be used as a dressing facility. Although Tennessee Mobile Carriers appeared at first glance to have the low bid, that company proposed to try to reuse the old skirting at the new location, which maintenance supervisor Daniel Kleindienst said would be a bad idea because the lay of the land might be different. Bennett Truck Transport's bid, on the other hand, included new skirting. Kleindienst said the old skirting would not go to waste but would be used for patching and repair.

Traffic lights

Ed Gray said the state has agreed to move a traffic signal on Madison Street from its current location in front of the old Walmart to the intersection of Madison and Learning Way. A new light will have to be purchased, however, because the light at the old location does not include a left turn signal.

Gray said warning lights on Unionville-Deason Road, near the new Community High School, will be in place soon. The state has also been asked to relocate the warning light southeast of the Community campus slightly father out.