Illinois Valley Times

Ottawa Elementary School District Administrator Christine Bucciarelli recently discussed the district's scores on the state report card and how they factor it into their school improvement plans.

During a Nov. 15 board meeting, Bucciarelli talked about the district improvement plans as a whole and also where each building was at. Both Lincoln and Shepherd are in the final years of the ESSA grant program, getting $10,000 for each school for their improvement plan. They have yet to get the final approval from the state for that grant money, however, so they have not been able to implement those ideas yet this year.

"We have two plans built within the plan," Bucciarelli said at the meeting. "So we have our school improvement plans, which is where all of our grade-level teams met per building to look at cohort data, grade-level data, and then also look at the evidence statement analysis report. And that report is helpful. It was not given to us last year. So this helps us just narrow down a little bit and focus more on a standard that we may not be meeting."

From the Illinois state report card, all five schools in the district received "commendable" designations, which they were excited about, especially coming out of COVID-19. The State gives those designations based on several different aspects, but 50% of the score for elementary schools is based on students’ growth, with only 15% being based on proficiency in subjects.

Each of the schools building leadership teams then went through an overview of their building-specific plans and how they will aim for more growth. Some of the tactics included more root word vocabulary lessons, working on math vocabulary and term definition to apply to a wider range of problems, creating small groups within classes to work on literacy, using number lines in daily math lessons, and implementing a problem or question of the day to increase repetition of skills.