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Date: 9/27/2022
HOLYOKE – As the first month of the new school year nears its end, Superintendent and Receiver Anthony Soto took time during the School Committee’s Sept. 19 meeting to provide a return to school update.
The update that brought the most discussion was the new attendance campaign being put on by the district. By putting together past years’ attendance data, the district was able to assess and come back this year with a plan to create stronger messaging to families about how attendance ties to student outcomes.
“Often times when we talk about attendance with our families, it’s usually punitive or it feels like they did something wrong, and we really want to go on a campaign to just educate folks on the statistics and the data around why it’s important to come to school, and stressing that coming to school, your child is going to have a better chance at being successful in school and beyond,” said Soto.
Soto added from reviewing the district’s data they have found that when a Holyoke K-8 student meets an attendance rate of 92 percent or more, they become twice as likely to be considered “on track” for graduation by the first two years of high school.
Soto also shared that these same students see suspensions 4.2 percent of the time while students below the 92 percent threshold are suspended 12 percent of the time.
“That’s an interesting data point that we’ve dug into a little bit. If I’m sitting in a class and all of my classmates had five more days [in school] than me, they’re probably a little more confident than I am to participate, and when you’re disengaged as a student,” Soto said. “These are some of the strong reasons why we feel we want to educate our families on making sure that they attend school more regularly.”
The old attendance campaign’s slogan was “Strive for Five” but now will be “Attend Today, Achieve Tomorrow” according to Soto, and the district will continue to try and educate families on the importance of being consistently present in school.
Family Essence Coordinator at Donahue School Stephanie Garcia joined the discussion to add insight on how this campaign was formed. Garcia said as they started engaging with families on the importance of attendance, they received a lot of feedback and perspectives from the other side of the situation.
“I think what we had noticed, it was kind of like, not the lack of knowledge but the balancing of vacations, doctor’s appointments. So that’s why we wanted to approach this campaign more like an educational campaign to our families because they know the process,” Garcia said. “It was more like a mentality change. Why it’s important to have your students in school 180 days of the year.”
Garcia added this new campaign differs from previous district attempts with attendance as there is no celebration or prizes awarded as an incentive to get better attendance. She said the focus is on educating families and that the messaging could change throughout the school year based on results in attendance, but there could still be opportunities for rewards such as an ice cream party for students.
Garcia noted that each school has someone in a role similar to hers where they are responsible for tracking their own school’s data and bringing that data in discussion with the other schools in Holyoke. Depending on the data discovered, trends are identified and case management begins according to Garcia.
Ward 3 School Committee member Yadilette Rivera Colón thanked the superintendent and district members involved for their work on this campaign and felt it would be useful in enriching learners.
“It really matches our community and things that we should be striving for,” Rivera Colón said.
Soto also gave an update on attendance and shared the district attendance rate for the first three weeks of school is 89.8 percent compared to 85.5 percent last year. According to Soto, rates tend to be highest mid-week (peaking at 92.2 percent one day this year) and then are lower on Mondays and Fridays.
“That’s nowhere near where we were pre-[coronavirus] pandemic but I feel very good about us moving in the right direction. We still have a lot of work to do,” Soto said.
Soto added as the school year continues data will become more accurate and clearer to compare to years past but the results early on have been encouraging.
The other update of note to start this school year comes from the district’s new academic playbook. Soto began the update talking about the partnership between the district and Relay, a program that helps prepare teachers and leaders to build an environment where every student has a clear path to success.
Soto was happy to share that almost 95 percent of the district’s expert teachers and all of their academic directors and school leaders participated in the summer of learning courses with Relay. These sessions were used to get district members up to speed about what is expected of them and give them the tools they need to effectively coach their teachers and have an impact on what’s going on in the classroom.
“We had a strong start and I think that 100 percent is a result of all the deep planning that was led by [Executive Director of School Leadership] Jackie Glasheen and [Assistant Superintendent] Dr. [Stephen] Mahoney on really getting prepared for school,” Soto said. “For the first time, schools have what we call an academic playbook.”
Soto said the district has mapped out with school leaders their weekly plans and expectations in learning and have already planned out the first quarter of the school year. The new model being used looks to allow planning to be made in each school that follows structures and expectations for students. Each school will have different looking plans each week based on their own students’ performances.
One example shown during the discussion was of a week one plan divided up of key criteria to monitor. For teacher skills, class is expected to start within the first five minutes through engagement with praise for effort and reminders for struggling students. Also listed is an emphasis on giving clear directions and monitoring how students follow their instructions.
Also, to be monitored is teachers’ daily prep, student culture including one-on-one wellness checks with struggling students and reference of school values. Also featured in this week one example was focus on arrival and morning meeting for all students and classes as part of a schoolwide system.
The strong start playbook emphasizes not only goals in the classroom but goals for students’ mental health and schoolwide systems. Week to week emphasis will change and every school’s planning should reflect the strengths and needs of the school’s students.
“Principals are practicing this and going through their playbook and living it out every day. All of this information is just being tracked and then aggregated by Jackie [Glasheen] so that when we review quarter one, we can look for trends,” Soto said. “We can look for areas of concern, not in a punitive way but to say like, all right, this is what we’re looking at. What type of supports do principals need in this?”
Soto added principals are expected to be in classrooms and monitoring teachers in relation to their planning daily. School Committee member Ellie Wilson asked Soto how many observations teachers should expect throughout their school week and if that could become a distraction.
Soto explained that it was not meant to be set up as a system to “catch” teachers making mistakes but as a way to observe practice and provide either reinforcement on some positives while also to providing coaching if needed.
“No one wants to find out at the end of the year on their evaluation that they were doing a terrible job. So, if we provide real-time coaching to teachers, we strongly believe that that’s going to have an impact on the quality of teaching that’s happening in classrooms,” Soto said.
School Committee member John Whelihan voiced support for the observation piece of the districts planning and said if he were a teacher, he would want the principal to see what he had going on in his work and get feedback.
Glasheen added the observation was not the main purpose of the playbook but only a part of the feedback process.
“It is to build really the leader skill by knowing exactly what’s happening on their campus and then being able to support where needed. I expect principals that I work with in Holyoke to have at least 50 data points a week, so they’re in 50 classrooms,” Glasheen said. “At no time are any of those principals writing any teacher names down. They’re going across the management, really strong practices that we know and finding trends on those.”