Student performance, acceptance and safety part of Charles City district’s new five-year plan

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City School District has a five-year strategic plan to improve student learning and other goals including creating a learning environment that students agree is welcoming and inclusive and provides an opportunity to learn in “a healthy, safe, and educationally appropriate facility.”

The first priority is assuring that “all students are proficient or above in reading and math by 2027.”

Some of that is in response to a realization that “we need to up our game,” school Superintendent Dr. Anne Lundquist told a group of several dozen business people and city leaders, parents and other community members at a “Lunch & Learn” held last week at the public library.

The lunch – catered by the Comet Cafe program students at the high school – was the first of what Lundquist said would be regular meetings to talk about school district topics, including one soon that will address the proposal to ask voters to approve selling up to $27 million in bonds to renovate the high school and add an auditorium.

The program last week featured Lundquist and new Director of Academic Services Dr. Jennifer Schilling.

“Today we’re laying the groundwork for our school improvement efforts,” Lundquist said, adding that it was a fortunate coincidence that last summer when they were hiring her as the interim superintendent, the previous five-year plan was coming to an end, so it was time to develop the next one.

“I was able to work closely with the team of senior leaders including myself, our directors and our building principals and assistant principals, and design five-year goals moving forward,” she said.

The district’s new vision and mission statements may sound similar to previous statements, but they have a few new emphases, she said. The new district vision statement is “To develop learners who are competent, compassionate, problem solvers.”

There was a little resistance to the “compassionate” part of the statement, with some people thinking it was “a little bit warm and fuzzy,” Lundquist said.

“Here’s the reason I was pretty solid on keeping it there,” she said. “Because all I have to do is turn on the television and I know that our world would be a whole lot better place if the individuals that were leading us today in all aspects of the globe, in every corner, had a little bit more compassion. Our schools would be a lot safer if we had a little bit more compassion.”

The mission statement is “To challenge all students to achieve their full potential through engaging, responsive, educational experiences that inspire innovation, critical thinking and collaboration.”

Lundquist said students will achieve their full potential in different ways, and that requires the schools to individualize education for students.

“We want it to be engaging,” she said. “When I go in and out of classrooms, I don’t look at what the teacher’s doing particularly. … I look at the engagement of the students. Are they involved? Are they thinking? Are they working? Can they verbalize for me what’s happening, what their goals are for that lesson?”

Lundquist said teachers have to adapt their teaching methods to the needs of the students.

“It’s not a matter of how smart are you as a kid. It’s how are you smart? Are you smart in the visual way? Do I need to come up with some non-linguistic representations for you? Do I need to respond to your ability if you just can’t keep yourself in your seat and hold still, can I adjust or adapt the learning for you?” she asked.

The “guiding principle” of the district will be “We believe all students can achieve at high levels, and we are committed to supporting their learning.”

“We are committed to doing whatever it takes for that to be the case. It’s that simple,” she said.

The last part of the district’s vision and mission is what the five-year plan calls “Comet Pride,” and the five qualities it exemplifies are “integrity, courage, resilience, excellence and responsibility.”

Lundquist said that was her favorite part of the vision and mission, because those five words can be posted in the schools and every student, staff member and parent who walks by can see in an instant what the priorities are.

Digging in to the new five-year improvement plan, Lundquist said it’s a combination of long range goals from this school year to the 2026-27 school year, along with annual improvement goals that tie back in to the long-range goals, and individual school building and district department goals that tie in to the annual goals.

The five-year plan is available at the school district’s website, at www.charlescityschools.org.

Part of the long-term goal that all students be proficient or above in reading and math by 2027, is the annual improvement goal for this school year to increase the number of kindergarten-to-second-grade students who are scoring proficient for their grade level, increasing the number of grade 3-11 students scoring proficient or above on the annual state student assessment tests, increasing the number of students who score 22 or higher on the ACT college placement test, and increasing the high school graduation rate.

Later in the program, during a question and answer session, a retired teacher asked why, even though the district points to some test score improvements in recent years, the district’s scores are hovering around average, instead of being among the top in the state as they were years ago.

“I agree with you. We need to up our game,” Lundquist said.

“In many areas we’re slightly above average. In many areas we’re slightly below. Here’s the thing we know. If we at least acknowledge what the problem is and where we are, we can figure out how to make it better.”

Lundquist said part of the problem was a lack of leadership in recent years specifically on curriculum instruction and assessment, and that’s why she is so happy the district agreed to hire Schilling for that role.

“For whatever reason we chose not to have that leadership position in place, and in complete honesty, absent that type of leadership, our schools did the best they could, but they tended to operate independently,” Lundquist said. “Now we have an opportunity to take the good work at each of the individual schools and in a more strategic fashion – and when I say strategic I mean an aligned and cohesive direction – to get that needle moving upward.”

The Board of Education will begin reviewing the progress on the action plans starting with the board meeting Nov. 28, Lundquist said, and two schools or departments will make a report at each board meeting into February.

“We’ll provide a report card at the end of the school year with data on each of those annual improvement goals. You’ll see the extreme to which your school district leaders’ efforts have achieved these goals,” she said.

Academic Services Director Schilling said her two areas of focus are curriculum, instruction and assessment; and special education services district wide.

“Without having a curriculum director for the last several years, most of the buildings have been kind of working individually and isolated in meeting their own goals, so we’re trying to build more opportunities for communication and collaboration between those buildings” Schilling said.

One of her big goals currently is a review of the K-5 math program currently taking place, to make sure it aligns with the grade 6-12 math program that was recently adopted.

Another goal is helping instill best practices with teachers at every grade level.

“We are implementing PLCs – professional learning communities – more regularly in all buildings, where teachers focus on student data, and look at how students are progressing in reaching standards.”

That includes not only doing what is necessary to help those students who may be not quite as successful, but also providing opportunities for students who are reaching the benchmarks so they can grow beyond those goals, Schilling said.

“Your teachers are really knowledgeable. Your teachers really care about the kids. We just need to provide the support with instruction. There’s absolutely great collaboration going on between the senior leadership team as we move forward, trying to build more of a systematic approach to curriculum instruction and in the special ed program,” she said.