School board studies student achievement trends

The school board met Tuesday evening in a special session designed to address student achievement. But what started out as a presentation laden with data evolved rather quickly into a roundtable discussion of the types of drastic changes the board could initiate to accelerate the improvement of test scores, district-wide communication and student successes across the board. Among the ideas, a year-round school calendar, longer school days, and pre-school for every child in the district.
Louann Carlomagno, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, had prepared numerous graphs depicting numbers crunched every which way. And, for the most part, the numbers looked good. Adequate yearly progress and academic performance index scores were up at all schools. But troublingly, when compared with those of the state, the Sonoma Valley Unified School District scores are falling short.
Board member Gary DeSmet pointed out that, when compared with similarly ranked schools in the state, our schools appear to fall in the bottom third. “We’ve made significant achievements and are closing the gap but we still need to do much better,” said Carlomagno.
A number of charts examined the Valley’s demographics, which have changed drastically over the past few years. While enrollment has dropped almost steadily since the late 1990s, the number of English language learners has increased steadily. Of the Valley’s current student population, 35 percent are ELL compared to half that number ten years ago.
However, despite a language-based learning gap, El Verano School, for instance, has doubled its rate of students scoring in the proficient range for language arts over the past few years. The district’s targets include both moving students forward each year and having more of them reach the “proficient” level in math and English.
Audience member Tim Boeve asked the critical question about the flat trend in those numbers, “If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, will we ever reach an adequate level of proficiency?” The answer was clearly no, and so the board expressed interest in making significant changes to the way things are currently being done.
Taking input from the audience, board members listed some educational concepts in use elsewhere, like a longer school day or intersession instruction for struggling students. Experts from the consulting group Springboard Schools, which has been working with the district for several years, said that some districts make a commitment to become “high-performing districts,” improving all the schools in the process.
One approach, the year-round schedule, had been initiated at Sonoma Charter School but was dropped, according to parent Darcy McNairy, because it was too difficult to coordinate schedules with the other Valley schools.
“Everyone on this board wants to act but not foolishly,” said board president Dan Gustafson. “But what are our expectations? What are the big ideas? We need to come up with some ideas and present them to the community to get this ball rolling.”
Mario Castillo, El Verano parent and PTO vice president, was adamant about involving the Latino community in any and all discussions. “We need communication and buy in from these parents, as well,” said Castillo. “Our ultimate goal is raising student achievement,” said Carlomagno. “We’re committed to making that happen and are open to new ideas to further that goal.”
The next board meeting will be held on May 12, with graduation and dropout rates and cohort analysis on the agenda. Following that, the May 26 school board meeting will address the district’s strategic plan. All meetings are held at the district offices on Railroad Avenue unless otherwise noted.