Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 3/9/2023
EAST LONGMEADOW – With the release of Gov. Maura Healey’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 (FY24), East Longmeadow Public Schools (ELPS) learned it may receive a $2 million increase in Chapter 70 state aid.
At the Feb. 27 School Committee meeting, Superintendent Gordon Smith called the 9.8 percent increase over last year “pretty incredible” and said it was the highest increase the district had seen in two decades. Smith credited a fully funded Student Opportunity Act, which distributes aid based on the proportion of students who are English language learners, low income or who require special education services.
Assistant Superintendent for Business Pamela Blair explained that she had expected Chapter 70 to provide about $670,000. The funding would cover several priorities that had been planned for, such as the 14 percent hike in out-of-district (OOD) tuition for special education students, adding three paraprofessionals to the operating budget, rather than paying for them through a grant, and a social-emotional learning teacher at the preK-2 level.
Some items on the district’s wish list could also be covered with the unexpected funding, including making five building substitutes and a preschool coordinator permanent parts of the operating budget, instead of grant-funded, hiring a custodian and using the money to cushion the special education circuit breaker account. These items would increase the FY24 budget to $34.95 million, up 4.9 percent, or $1.6 million over FY23.
“This gives us an opportunity in the school department and town that we may never see again,” Blair advised the committee.
However, School Committee Chair Gregory Thompson cautioned against taking full advantage of the increased funding.
“We have to be cautious with directly correlating Chapter 70 with an increase in the budget,” he said, reminding the committee that some years the town receives no increase.
Instead, he asked to keep the increase under 4 percent. He suggested the committee request the town use some of that funding toward the district’s list of capital projects, totaling $7 million. He opined that the district could do without an additional custodian and that ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) grant funding was available to pay for the other positions for one more year.
“This is our year to tighten up,” Thompson announced and noted the high school building project will add to taxes in the future.
School Committee member Elizabeth Marsian-Boucher agreed. She expressed concern that moving the three paraprofessionals to the operating budget could mean positions may need to be cut if there is no increase to Chapter 70 in FY25. Blair explained that it was unlikely due to retirements and natural staff turnover.
The committee approved staying the course with a 3.9 percent increase on an otherwise level services budget, retaining the planned for position and mostly covering the OOD increase.
Mid-cycle data review
Smith presented a mid-cycle review of school climate and social-emotional data for the district. The data is compiled through a survey from Panorama, an educational program used by roughly 2,000 districts nationwide. There are high survey participation rates among students in elementary school and middle school, but Smith reported the high school raffled off a Dunkin gift card to encourage participation.
In grades K-2, social emotional and school climate data is reported by teachers. Since the fall survey, teacher ratings of student emotional regulation, social awareness and social perspective taking all rose 1 percentage point to 81 percent, 69 percent, and 53 percent, respectively.
Classroom effort increased by six points to 70 percent, engagement was up by six points to 64 percent and self-management was up five points to a 57 percent favorable rating.
Beginning in grades 3-5, students respond to the survey questions. Supportive relationships increased slightly from the fall to 92 percent. Sixty-nine percent of students reported not experiencing challenging feelings. Both figures put ELPS in the 80th to 99th percentile of districts reporting such data. Students reporting experiencing positive feelings decreased slightly to 69 percent while school climate dropped by 4 points to 82 percent and school safety dropped to 77 percent, five points lower than in the fall.
Smith explained school safety includes witnessing or being the target of bullying, which he said is “always followed up on.”
For grades 6-12, Students reported supportive relationships steady at 88 percent since the beginning of the year and school climate was rated 81 percent positive. The presence of challenging feelings fell by 5 points to 58 percent, while positive feelings fell by 2 points to 63 percent. The rankings for supportive relationships, positive feelings and challenging feelings are all in the 80th to 99th percentile among responding districts.
Smith also shared data from i-Ready, which measures students’ academic achievement level in comparison with their grade level. The superintendent said, “we are seeing growth,” though he admitted there was “quicker” growth in English language arts than in mathematics.
Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Heather Brown said that when students begin the year one or two grade levels behind, teachers must catch the student up and teach the new skills by year’s end. “That’s when the challenge comes in,” she said. Scores for students who scored as early in their grade level or better are listed as within their grade level below.
Overall, 55 percent of students are reading within their grade level, compared to 43 percent at the beginning of the year.
Among “low income” students, an average of 39 percent were reading within their grade level, while an average of 64 percent of non-low-income students scored within their grade level. The scores for these categories of students increased by 9 and 15 points, respectively, since the beginning of the year.
For special education students, 26 percent were reading within their grade level, up 12 points from the beginning of the school year. General education students performing at the same level rose from 51 percent in the fall to 65 percent.
Brown said Latinx students performing within their grade level lagged non-Latinx students, 41 percent to 59 percent.
In terms of math, 48 percent of students are performing within their grade level, as opposed to 31 percent in the fall. Among low-income students, 21 percent were within their grade level, up slightly from 19 percent at the beginning of the year. Non-low-income students have remained steady, with 58 percent performing within their grade level.
Among special education math students, the percentage performing within their grade level is 24 percent, up 11 points from the fall. Fifty-seven percent of general education students scored within their grade level in math, an improvement of 21 points.
The percentage of multi-language learners within their grade level in math remained at 11 percent. For students outside of this category, 50 percent scored within their grade level, up from 22 percent in the fall.
Brown recognized that some students were one or more grade levels behind at the beginning of the year and have caught up by at least a full grade level in less than a year.
East Longmeadow high school will adopt i-Ready as a diagnostic tool in the 2023-2024 school year. Despite this, Smith noted that there has been a movement away from standardized tests on the national level and said many colleges are not considering test scores as admissions criteria. He also said there had been a cohort of students who scored successfully on the PSAT exam, but that achievement had not been reflected in their grades. This trend is something the district is examining.