Executive Summary. J. Paul Truluck Intermediate School

Transcription

1 Florence School District #3 Mrs. Jeanette Altman, Principal PO Box Carlisle St. Lake City, SC Document Generated On October 16, 2015

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Description of the School 2 School's Purpose 3 Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement 4 Additional Information 5

3 Introduction Every school has its own story to tell. The context in which teaching and learning takes place influences the processes and procedures by which the school makes decisions around curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The context also impacts the way a school stays faithful to its vision. Many factors contribute to the overall narrative such as an identification of stakeholders, a description of stakeholder engagement, the trends and issues affecting the school, and the kinds of programs and services that a school implements to support student learning. The purpose of the Executive Summary (ES) is to provide a school with an opportunity to describe in narrative form the strengths and challenges it encounters. By doing so, the public and members of the school community will have a more complete picture of how the school perceives itself and the process of self-reflection for continuous improvement. This summary is structured for the school to reflect on how it provides teaching and learning on a day to day basis. Page 1

4 Description of the School Describe the school's size, community/communities, location, and changes it has experienced in the last three years. Include demographic information about the students, staff, and community at large. What unique features and challenges are associated with the community/communities the school serves? (JPTIS) is a public Title I intermediate school located in the rural town of Lake City, South Carolina. Prior to the school year, JPTIS was one of two middle schools serving grades 6-8 in Florence School District Three, but with school restructuring in , it is currently in its second year of operation as the only intermediate school serving all 6th graders in the district. Seventh and eighth graders now attend Ronald E. McNair Junior High school. The current school enrollment consists of 286 students, and the demographics of the school are 64% African-American, 26% White, 6% Hispanic, and 4% Multiracial. The Lake City community is comprised of nearly 7,000 citizens, and the median household income in the town is $22,534. Lake City is stable, and through the work of various organizations like ArtFields and the Lake City Partnership Council, positive attention is being drawn to the town. Due to the low household income, poverty is certainly a challenge faced within our school, but we strive to overcome it by providing our students with resources and equipping them with the skills and knowledge needed to excel in high school studies and work toward their goals in higher education or the workforce. Due to the small size of our town and the limited opportunities in Lake City, teacher recruitment and retention is also a challenge we face, but we have put measures in place to support our teachers through the use of instructional coaching and ongoing professional development in order to set them up for successful careers in our school. Page 2

5 School's Purpose Provide the school's purpose statement and ancillary content such as mission, vision, values, and/or beliefs. Describe how the school embodies its purpose through its program offerings and expectations for students. The mission of is to prepare our students for a college and/or career ready future. We also have an active character education program and emphasize that a JPTIS student is respectful, responsible, trustworthy, and college bound. Each student has a character card and earns stickers in order to qualify for our character incentive. Students earn character stickers by displaying the character traits mentioned above. Additionally, students can gain stickers from administrators once they've received all teachers stickers, and can earn trust bracelets that provide them with more rewards. Everyone at JPTIS has an important role in ensuring that we achieve our mission. We start by hiring and retaining excellent and highly qualified teachers. In , 100% of our teachers are deemed highly qualified in South Carolina, and almost 50% of them have degrees beyond their initial certification. Beginning in , we began using the South Carolina College and Career Ready Standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics in order to provide the best preparation for our students' futures. Our school has TAG classes and advanced ELA & math classes to meet the needs of all students including our gifted (TAG) students. We also have interventionists who work with our students that need more intense intervention. In addition to our school wide character program, students who are successful in their academics also enjoy being part of our active Junior Beta Club and learn about the importance of "giving back" through working to clean and beautify our campus during the year. In order to ensure students have the opportunity to excel in a variety of areas, we also have a very active and talented band, several choral groups, and a visual arts course. Students with leadership potential can be part of our Student Government and Student Ambassador programs. Lastly, our mission, beliefs, and norms are best conveyed and supported through our administration, faculty, and staff, who lead by example. Every morning on the announcements, the principal recites our mission and beliefs. Every meeting of teachers that is held at our school begins with a review and reminder of the norms which direct our behavior and attitudes. Our administrative team members set high expectations for themselves, our teachers, and our students. Page 3

6 Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement Describe the school's notable achievements and areas of improvement in the last three years. Additionally, describe areas for improvement that the school is striving to achieve in the next three years. In the past three years, JPTIS has had many notable achievements. Our students are successful and represent our school well at the community, state, and national level. For National History Day projects, one of our students won locally and went on to represent our school in the regional competition. In the past three years, JPTIS had nine students earn Junior Scholar recognition, multiple students recognized for scoring high on the Clemson Biology Merit Exam, and students who won various levels of distinction in our district's Arbor Day Art Contest. Students have been accepted to and participated in the South Carolina Governor's School of the Arts and Humanities Summer Institute and the Summer Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama. Our musically talented students have continued to excel, with our JPTIS band earning the "superior" rating at the band competition in Florida. In the past three years, when our school was a middle school, we offered our students three high school credit courses: English I, Algebra I, and Computer Applications. Students who take English I and Algebra I also take the state end-of-course examination. Over the last three years, the Algebra I passage rate was 100%, while the English I passage rate was 100% for two years and 96% and. In addition to these high school credit courses, seventh grade students who excel academically can take advanced ELA and math courses. As we look to the next three years, though we celebrate the achievements of our students, we know we must continuously progress. Our achievement in English/Language Arts was lower than expected. In addition, one of our major areas of focus is to decrease the achievement gap that separates some of our subgroups. We will particularly focus on the following subgroups: African-American males, disabled students, and English language learners. In order to help improve the achievement of these specific subgroups, we will intentionally focus on data and ensure that we are differentiating instruction for our students. JPTIS tracks student data and each teacher tracks his or her own data. Teachers meet during one of their planning periods each week for a 50-minute professional learning community (PLC) meeting where using data to plan and instruction and assessment is a common and frequent focus. Additionally, we will use the PLC meeting time to learn and develop strategies to better meet the needs of the students in our subgroups Page 4

7 Additional Information Provide any additional information you would like to share with the public and community that were not prompted in the previous sections. Last year we started an initiative, Bridge to Success, to create a partnership with parents and community to help our students with learning disabilities to improve their social, emotional and academical skills. The project had great response from the parents and community. As a result, we decided to expand our efforts in reaching out to parents and getting more support for our kids. We really believe that if we work as a true family, we will see tremendous gains with our students (last year average increase in reading and math-15 points for MAP testing). We had a great parent turnout at our kickoff event, with almost 50% (25 out of 54) of our parents who showed up. At the kickoff event, we gave parents information about how to help their child at home, gave them details on the communication tools that we will use throughout the year to constantly inform parents of their child's progress, and gave them tutorials on how to access computer programs that the school has purchased to reinforce math and reading skills outside of school. Improving literacy is a focus for the district and our school. We are using the Achieve 3000 program with approximately 50% of our students (150 students) to improve their Lexile levels. The Achieve 3000 program has a component that addresses the gifted students as well as the students that are reading below grade level. The teacher administers the Level Set test that determines each individual Lexile level. Then the program prescribes articles that are at the individual Lexile, but challenges them to increase the Lexile level. While the students are working on computers, the teacher pulls small groups of 3-5 students and works on small group lessons to meet their individual needs. Page 5