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Date: 11/15/2023
EAST LONGMEADOW — East Longmeadow Public Schools Superintendent Gordon Smith brought administrators from each of the school department’s six schools in to deliver updates on their work to achieve school department goals.
Administrators addressed three school department objectives: reducing chronic absenteeism, creating a more inclusive school environment with higher student engagement, and using multi-tiered systems of support to aid struggling students. In the multi-tiered model, Tier 1 is general education, while Tier 2 focuses on students who require some support. Students in Tier 3 need more intensive support than those in Tier 2.
Absenteeism
Smith said that attendance overall has improved, but chronic absenteeism — defined as missing 10% of school days — is still a challenge. “To do your best learning, you have to be here,” Smith remarked.
East Longmeadow High School Principal Frank Page said that while the high school has exceeded the state-identified target for chronic absenteeism, the high-risk population at the high school is still struggling with it. Working from the expectation that improving attendance will improve student achievement, an attendance team was created before the beginning of the 2023-24 school year. The team meets biweekly and identifies strategies to reduce absenteeism.
Page said the goal was to create an environment in which students want to come to school. Smith added, “We’re not looking to punish, we’re looking to partner [and] problem solve.” He added that about 30% of East Longmeadow High School students are chronically absent.
At the middle school, Principal Steve Pearson reported that the school is “getting ahead” of chronic absenteeism by addressing it when students have missed four or five days of school, instead of waiting until they are considered “chronic.” Rates of chronic absenteeism have dropped by 65%. Pearson celebrated that while 105 letters about absences went out to parents in 2022, only 34 were sent out this year.
While Birchland Park Middle School exceeded the targets for absenteeism overall, attendance rates among Black students declined over the previous year. To address this, a “mini attendance team” has been organized to check in with chronically absent students and their families. The school is also incentivizing attendance through rewards.
At the elementary level, Mapleshade School Principal Conor Martin said his team has been gathering information through the Panorama program and using it to identify students with “critical” absences. From there, they have been demonstrating “concrete” examples of learning loss experienced because of absences by showing parents the student’s St Math progress and what they have missed.
Mountain View School Principal Elaine Santaniello said the school’s average daily attendance is 96.8%. She said the most common reason for students to be absent is family vacations.
There has been a significant drop in chronic absenteeism among the town’s youngest students.
Meadow Brook has seen absenteeism drop from 27% in the 2022-23 school year to 18% this year. Like Santaniello, Meadow Brook School Assistant Principal Renee Lodi said family vacations are the number one cause of absences. Lodi said the school would be sending parents a letter to highlight the attendance expectations. She said this is the first time many families have had a child in school, and they may not understand the expectations.
Interventions
East Longmeadow High School Assistant Principal Anne Blain said that a “freshman team” of teachers has been established to work with the same set of students and confer on their progress as a group and identify students who need interventions.
Assessment scores for students designated as high needs — those who are low-income, have disabilities or and English language learners — fell over last year in math, and while the English language arts scores improved, they are still below target. Page explained that the school is implementing the i-Ready diagnostic program for ninth graders and using it in conjunction with data from the MCAS and PSAT assessments to find discrepancies in achievement and areas for improvement.
Birchland Park Middle School Assistant Principal Natalie Ojunga-Andrew said achievement at the school is not growing as fast as leadership would like, so the school has created coaching cycles. Teachers will work with math and English language arts coaches to identify areas of instruction to focus on and strategize ways to identify barriers to learning and address them. This may include observing lessons, modeling teaching strategies or helping with lesson plans, Ojunga-Andrew said. New teachers will work with the coaches every two weeks.
So far, Ojunga-Andrew said the program is “looking very promising.” Eventually, the coaching cycles will also include science and social studies teachers.
School Committee member Aimee Dalenta asked how the teachers have responded. Ojunga-Andrew said that there was likely some apprehension on the teachers’ behalf, but the coaching is “low-risk” and there have been “great results.”
The school has also added more Tier 2 resources for English language arts and implemented Tier 3 support for “severely underperforming” math students.
Martin said teachers at Mapleshade have been undergoing professional development on “teaching from the margins,” and said all students benefit from this “very involved” training.
Mountain View has also been gathering social-emotional behavior data using the Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener. This allows teachers to compare their impression of students with the students’ own responses. Santaniello said teachers and students are “pretty close in terms of how they were viewing each other.”
Using the PowerSchool, Panorama and i-Ready programs, Santaniello said Mountain View has found that 45% of students are performing at grade level in English language arts and that threshold for math is at 31%. She attributed this to COVID-19-related learning loss and the learning curve that comes with new curricula.
Using targeted interventions, Santaniello said she is aiming for 30% growth by the end of the year. She said having a math interventionist has been “huge.” Meanwhile, Meadow Brook has seen a marked increase in the frequency and severity of social-emotional learning challenges. Lodi said that there is a sharp increase in young children with mental health struggles, reflecting nationwide trends.
Lodi said paraprofessionals have been shifted to address needs, but there are not enough for special education students and those with social-emotional needs. She said that she is working on gathering more resources and providing training in trauma-sensitive practices to all staff. It has been one of the best-attended professional development courses in her time at the school, Lodi said.
Monthly literacy learning walks allow the administration to provide feedback to teachers as needed.
Lodi commented that student scores in the fall have been trending downward for the past few years, but spring scores have been on the rise, meaning the amount of growth in a given year has been increasing for students.
Inclusivity and engagement
Eight in 10 high school students reported feeling as though they were “part of the community.” To target the remaining 20%, East Longmeadow High School Assistant Principal Gary Wright said the school will be utilizing the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, School Council and Athletic Leadership Council to create a more welcoming environment. He said that an environment that makes students want to attend school will allow the school to address areas in which interventions are needed.
Pearson said the middle school partnered with the Academic Leadership Association last year to facilitate mentorship of “at-risk” students. This year they are expanding that partnership to include professional development to deepen relationships with students and improve academic and social-emotional outcomes.
“We’re thrilled at what they’ve been doing so far,” Pearson said.
Martin said, “I want each student to feel they have a place at Mapleshade.” He has embraced the various backgrounds of students by having them interview a family member about their culture. These interviews are then included in the school’s morning announcements, and therefore, “giving students a platform to be able to share themselves,” he said.
Santaniello said the school is working to increase engagement levels by providing opportunities for connection with the school community. These include Friday dance parties, family holiday movie nights, a Veterans Day event and afterschool programs.
Lodi said play is critical for young learners and the resources for play at Meadow Brook are not inclusive of all students. She explained that the school has one functional play structure. With up to 150 students on the playground at a time, she said it receives a lot of use and is wearing. Lodi is pursuing grant funding to purchase accessible playground equipment. The surface of the playground would also be changed from woodchips, which can pose dangers for wheelchair users, to a rubberized surface.