Ankeny Community School District General Al Neppl, Principal 3800 Abilene Rd. Ankeny, IA 50023 Document Generated On January 11, 2016
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Description of the School 2 School's Purpose 4 Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement 6 Additional Information 8
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
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? School is a PK-5th grade elementary school that is located on the northwest edge of Ankeny, IA. Rock Creek is the tenth elementary school in our district and is associated with the north feeder system. We officially opened in August of 2014, and we were serving approximately 140 pre-school students and 450 K-5 students (590). For the 2015-2016 school year we are currently serving approximately 170 pre-school students and 530 K-5 students (700). Our school motto is "The Adventure Begins Here". We currently have five pre-school programs offering both AM and PM sections for a total of ten sections of multi-age pre-school. We have four sections of Kindergarten which are all at our board policy capacity of 25 students per room. We have also four sections of 1st and 2nd grade and three sections of 3-5 grades. The average class size for our 1st-5th grade rooms is 25 students which is just under our board policy capacity of 27 students per 1st-5th grade room. The Rock Creek staff is made up of 41 certified staff which includes 36 teachers, 1 school counselor, 1 social worker, 1 school nurse, 1 instructional coach, and the principal. We also have 38 classified staff which includes 33 associates/para-professionals, 3 custodians, and two administrative assistants. The 79 total staff members are responsible for providing programming for PK-5 in general education, Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE), special education and targeted services (AELP, Targeted Reading), and elementary exploratory classes to include Art, Vocal and Instrumental Music, Physical Education, Technology, and Guidance. The portion of the Ankeny School District that Rock Creek serves is made up of a combination of single family homes, single family rental properties (condos/townhomes), and multi-family rental properties. Much of the area within the boundary for our school is still under development and will experience continuous rapid growth for the next few years at a minimum. Due to the large number of rental properties within the Rock Creek neighborhood we have experienced greater mobility in terms of families moving in and out of the neighborhood or district. When Rock Creek opened in the fall of 2014 approximately 350 of the students were transitioned from another nearby elementary school to our new school. Many of these students and families had known each other for several years and although this did help with the transition, changing elementary boundaries is often an emotional change. In addition to the student transitions that occurred, a staffing plan was implemented (spring 2014) which resulted in approximately 45 staff members requesting to transfer to Rock Creek for approximately 33 open positions that we had. There were two teachers who were assigned as part of our early hiring process and then two additional staff were hired through an interview process in the spring of 2014. With the majority of staff members all transitioning from other Ankeny elementary schools to Rock Creek it provided for some unique challenges as we worked to develop our culture and vision as a school. To support our new building and staff our newly formed Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) worked through several days of the summer formalizing our norms and collective commitments so that we could use them as a foundation for our implementation of PLC's at Rock Creek. At the same time we slowly began to develop our PBIS implementation and our PSTeam (Problem Solving Team) processes, procedures, and accountability. A primary focus during our second semester last year was on Balanced Literacy and implementing the Reading Workshop Model in our classrooms. In our second year we have had to review our PBIS expectations and have also expanded into classroom PBIS, reviewed our PLC expectations and purpose, and began our work around implementing the Math Workshop Model. The Page 2
"melting pot" of Ankeny staff experienced first hand the autonomy that our elementary schools enjoy. Our student demographics are similar to our district demographic averages. The demographics are listed below: Rock Creek Student Demographics (2015-2016) (K-5 Students Only) Ankeny Community School District Demographics (2014-2015) 88% White 88% White 4% Hispanic 4% Hispanic 1% African American 2% African American 1% Asian 2% Asian 0% American Indian/Alaska Native 0.09% American Indian/Alaska Native 0% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 0.12% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 5% Other 3% Other 49.8% Female 49% Female 50.2% Male 51% Male 6.2% (approximate) 13% Free & reduced lunch status Program Students Served (percent of K-5 total) 532 total students AELP (Ankeny Extended Learning Program) 20 students (Grades 4-5) or 13% of 4th/5th grade students. 3.7% of our K-5 population. Targeted Reading Support 39 students - 7.3% Special Education 36 students - 7% Page 3
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. aligns with Ankeny School District's mission, vision, and core values which are as follows: Mission (Our Core Purpose and Distinction) Ankeny Community Schools is unified in its commitment, passion, and vision so every learner is prepared to achieve a lifetime of personal success. Core Values (Drivers of Our Words and Actions) Community - Learn and work together experiencing belonging, respect and collaboration Challenge - Develop high expectations and rigor with accountability Excellence - Pursue passionately world-class learning and continuous improvement Inspiration - Nurture the diverse aspirations of all learners Leadership - Model accountability to the district strategic road map, by acting intentionally, disciplined and compassionate in words and action Vision (What We Intend to Create) Ankeny Community Schools will establish a culture known for: Achievement and Responsiveness whereby: All students are engaged in and accountable for their learning All students are achieving their potential and prepared for success beyond K-12 All students are accessing individualized and challenging programming Innovation and Professionalism whereby: All staff are high quality and engaged with a clear focus on students and learning All students and staff are integrating technology innovations which accelerate learning and assure success for all Leadership and Unity whereby: All embrace and are engaged and are utilizing the comprehensive strategic roadmap to guide every priority and decision Over the last two years our focus at Rock Creek has been on "every learner" and reinforcing the notion that we are responsible for the growth of each student in our school. Our professional learning opportunities have been designed around the focus on every learner demonstrating growth. Our desire to develop a Rock Creek Literacy Workshop model evolved out of conversations around making a connection between our instruction and the curriculum standards, establishing a focus and purpose for our instruction, and providing differentiated learning opportunities for our students. As we implemented the Literacy Workshop Model last spring we also saw the need for more system data collection in the area of reading to demonstrate student growth over time. Our ILT adopted the district expectation that students who were below grade level would have an informal reading record weekly, those just below would have an informal reading record twice a month and those on grade level would be monitored on a monthly basis. This year we have increased our accountability towards this expectation by having teachers document the Page 4
monthly reading progress of each student in our school towards an identified individual goal. This expectation aligns to our building reading goal of each student demonstrating a year's worth of growth or more. This year our math goal and focus on implementing a Math Workshop approach also supports our vision of addressing the needs of every learner. Our teachers are focused and accountable for monitoring the progress of every student in math towards their mastery of the math summary statements. Through our data review process and the support of our PSTeam we are working to ensure that we are aware of the progress of every student, especially in the area of reading. Page 5
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. With Rock Creek's opening in the fall of 2014, we are continuing our journey of establishing our culture of learning and our focus on meeting the needs of every learner. One could say the relative smooth opening of our new building was a notable accomplishment. As we look back now we probably don't realize how overwhelmed everyone was a year ago or during the summer leading up to our opening. Another area that we are proud of is in the development of our Instructional Leadership Team, the establishment of our PSTeam and procedures, and the implementation of PBIS. While our ILT has experienced small changes in staff representation, our time together has been focused on building trust and keeping our focus on what is best for students, every student. We have spent time as an ILT reading the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This book study has had a profound impact on our ability to be vulnerable and to engage in true discourse as we plan and develop professional learning opportunities for staff. Once our PSTeam was established last year, we took advantage of the work that staff had been apart of in the past and developed our purpose, process, and procedures for supporting teachers in the development and implementation of quality interventions. Our PBIS implementation began last fall but formally we launched our building wide expectations in January of 2015. This fall we revisited our building wide expectations and through modeling and practice we have a more consistent approach to our expectations this year. Although our data shows room for improvement in specific areas of student behavior, we now have the data and are planning for ways to improve the problem areas while supporting teachers and staff. During our first year we were able to reflect on some of our building data, mainly related to reading in terms of BAS (Benchmark Assessment System), MAP, and FAST data. We held data review meetings starting in late January and again in the spring. We did administer IA Assessments had we had the opportunity to draw comparisons between our IA Assessment data for 4th and 5th grade and our MAP data. At Rock Creek we had the highest percentage(94.2%) of 3rd graders who were proficient on the Reading portion of IA Assessments in the North Feeder system. Of those students 43.5% were advanced proficient. Our 5th grade also had the highest percentage (95.2%) of students who were proficient on the Reading portion of IA Assessments in the entire school district. In the area of 3rd grade Math, we had 95.7% of our students proficient, with 47.8% advanced proficient. Our 5th grade had 96.8% of the students were proficient in the area of science. In 3rd grade social studies we had 94.2% of our students scoring proficient. Some areas of improvement from last year were related to our current 5th grade students. While their fourth grade data still reflects that almost 80% of our students were proficient, we know that we have many students who struggled and our data reflects some of the lowest in the district. We have implemented many interventions for these students in both reading and math. The 5th grade math scores from last year were slightly concerning, while the 5th grade social studies scores are some of the lowest proficiency levels in the district. As we monitored our building data last year we reflected on the results and the work of our teacher in professional development. During the summer of 2015 our ILT developed the following reading and math goals. The behavior goal was created by examining student and staff data regarding our implementation of PBIS by our PBIS team. ROCK CREEK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 2015-2016 BUILDING GOALS Page 6
Reading: 100% of (K-5) students will demonstrate one year's growth or more by the end of year. (Using Benchmark Assessment System - BAS) Math: 100% of (K-5) students will demonstrate proficient or above on all math summary statements. (Math summary statements are the end of year expectations for each grade level) Behavior: We will work towards full implementation of a school-wide PBIS approach to behavior. Successful implementation will be based on gaining 80% or higher on the Tiered Fidelity Inventory which measures implementation of PBIS in the classroom and non-classroom settings. Over the course of the rest of this school year and in the future we will continue to focus on supporting teachers in the implementation of the workshop model in both literacy and math. This will be an on going learning process. We are also going to be providing learning and support for our staff in the area of behavior and how to respond to our students who need some form of intervention, modeling, and support. Page 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. At Rock Creek we are very proud of our data conversations around student performance in the area of reading. Our Problem Solving Team (PSTeam) has established a clear process for the implementation of interventions for students struggling academically and we are currently working to clarify our process for students who are struggling behaviorally as well. After each assessment window throughout the school year we have Data Review conversations with each grade level team in which we examine our current data walls and make adjustments to the current performance level a student is at. The data walls are our visual reminder of the important work that is before us in helping all students achieve a year's worth of growth in reading. Page 8