During a work session to establish a strategic plan for the school district Saturday morning, Attala County School Board members and new Superintendent Kyle Hammond veered into discussions of a variety of significant potential changes to spur improved outcomes for the district.
Both Hammond and board members appeared to agree that time was of the essence and that bold change is likely ahead for the district.
Hammond presented the board with initiatives and goals, as well as means to measure performance going forward. By the end of the meeting, the entire board had endorsed the formal plan and expressed support for changes Hammond said are under consideration.
The goals
“The board takes the overview of the entire district, then the board holds me accountable for attaining these goals. Then I set the goals at the school level and I hold them accountable, and they hold teachers accountable,” he told the board. “This is why this is so very important, this goal-setting.”
Hammond said the strategic plan needs to be a living document in which the district is constantly reviewing its performance against a set of goals. Once a goal is reached, a new goal should be set, he said.
The board will be provided with charts detailing performance against the specific goals, as well as three-year trend lines for underlying items.
Board member Janice Dees said she was in favor of having set standards.
“We all have to have the same rules and the same accountability,” she said of the plans.
The new superintendent said choosing firm language that states that the district will be certain things, not strive toward them, is an important message to send to administrators, teachers, parents and students.
“We can’t afford to waste the time to become high-performing; everything that is done must make us high-performing. Some things just need to change — and now,” he told the board.
“I have observed a lot of great people throughout the district, but I also saw some lackadaisical behavior that had creeped in.”
Some teachers, he said, are teaching only for a small amount of time at the beginning of each class period, then handing out worksheets for students to do for the rest of the class time. Teachers, he said, need to be teaching for the entire class period. He also said classrooms will probably move to a learning centers format with teachers moving around to various groups to provide individualized instruction.
“The time inside that classroom is valuable…” he said, before Board Chairman Christy Moody added, “and we need to use it that way.”
Borrowing an analogy from coaching football, Hammond said that classroom instruction needs to be harder than the tests used to measure performance.
“When we coach at football, we want our practices to be harder than the game,” he said. “Then the game is easy.”
The goal for the “game” now is for individual schools and the district to earn at least a B from the state, then then As going forward.
“The B is the lowest level of our goal,” said Hammond, who noted that the district is only about 12 points shy of attaining an overall B from the state. “These are aggressive goals, but they are doable. We just need a tweaking of some practices and I believe it is achievable.”
Board member Vernita Rayford said that stress educators may experience trying to meet higher goals and more stringent performance standards will be worth it.
“We’re going to have a certain amount of stress, but this is a change for the better. You are either going to change or you are going to walk,” she said of the districts administrators and teachers.
“There are great students in these schools and we want to give them every opportunity to be successful,” said Moody. “We need to take the data and do something with it.”
McAdams High issues
When asked about the upcoming Saturday School program at McAdams High School, intended to help students receive remediation to attain higher test scores, Hammond said he is skeptical about participation and the potential positive impact it may have.
“If there aren’t kids the first week, I’ll probably pull the plug. That’s more of a remediation effort, but if your Monday through Friday instruction isn’t good, the remediation isn’t going to help,” he told the board. “I’m going to be very quick about pulling the plug and putting that money back into our tier one educational efforts.”
The discussion of McAdams, which has received a D and two Fs from the state in the last three years, led board members to question the continued use of an educational consulting firm. That firm was brought for the past three academic years to coach teachers to improve their teaching skills and the performance of the school’s students. But results have been scarce.
Several board members indicated that their patience with the consulting process may be running out after three years.
“I’m afraid they have moved from a consulting role into a teaching role. If I have to pay a consultant to be in your classroom to get you to do your job, we don’t need you,” said Moody.
Rayford agreed, noting that the board may have let the relationship go on for too long.
Schedule and responsibility changes
Hammond said he is considering a move toward block scheduling at the high schools, as his experience shows students learn and perform better when they can focus on key areas for extended periods of time.
“You cannot teach this curriculum and grow students on this (current) schedule,” said the Superintendent. “We need to build remediation into the curriculum. The growth numbers go through the roof when you remediate and enrich within the classroom time.”
Hammond said the district will be looking at implementation for the next school year.
He also said he will likely be asking to add instructional staff in limited situations, including where it would allow counselors to spend 80% of their time in providing actual counseling services, like working with students on preparing and applying for college and scholarships. At this time, counselors at two schools are also serving as assistant principals.
“The counselor is a pivotal role,” said Moody, to which Hammond agreed that “the roles should not be blended. It is contradictory to have a counselor responsible for discipline.”
The costs of progress
Fortunately, board members said, the district is financially sound and should be able to invest in the kind of changes Hammond is proposing to help the district meet the new goals.
“We want to be the district where people want to come to us,” said Moody. “In order to make changes and improvements, we’re going to need to spend some money.”
