School district working with consultants to overcome program improvement status

Pivot Learning Partners, previously known as Springboard Schools, were the presenters at Tuesday’s school board meeting. As mandated by the state department of education for schools in program improvement, the district must bring in outside consultants to counter that status.
“The district has been designated as ‘PI’ based upon criteria determined by the state, specifically our school’s performance on the Annual Yearly Progress indicators for student achievement,” said Dr. Pam Martens, superintendent of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District.
The district is in its third year of program improvement and has been working with PLP during this time, at a reported cost to date of about $190,000. According to the Pivot Learning Partners team of Cathy Townsley, a Sonoma Valley resident, and Chris Anderson, the district is improving each year but not enough yet to move out of program improvement.
A year ago, PLP performed a capacity study around the district’s ability to support its school improvement efforts in the areas of curriculum, instruction and assessment; professional development; human resource policies and procedures; data systems and monitoring; parents participation; and fiscal health. Once PLP completed the study, it made recommendations that would guide the work being done to close the achievement gap. The first step in the process: build district leadership and create a professional learning community
Board member Camerino Hawing interjected a comment wondering how, after hours of discussions about tackling the problem, the district is still in program improvement. “I want to see specific goals and specific results that we can monitor. We need to broadcast more about what we are really doing and what we need to succeed,” said Hawing.
“One of the biggest challenges in the work that we do is helping people improve without getting discouraged along the way,” said Anderson. “But you’re right, it’s not a quick fix. We find that with a long-term partnership, the improvement record outperformed that state average. But, it doesn’t happen overnight.”