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Date: 3/11/2020
SOUTHWICK – The Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School District School Committee met on March 5 for a presentation about Powder Mill School’s reading and math progress and to discuss changes to the district’s lunch menu.
The first order of business at the meeting was a presentation from Powder Mill School principal Erin Fahey-Carrier about the school’s current progress under the iReady reading program and current math benchmark testing programs. She began the presentation by taking a deep dive into the data the school had collected as part of its pilot year in the iReady program for fifth and sixth grade.
One of the current issues Fahey-Carrier said the school is currently combating is improving its vocabulary curriculum.
“This was very enlightening to us because the vocab seemed to be a much bigger issue for our students than we thought it would be,” she said, “We assumed that the vocab would be stronger so we have now put a lot of work into building our student vocabulary and to develop strategies for attacking words in their reading.”
She said, so far, the new iReady program has been beneficial to students of all different progress levels. She said, “It does give us results and lessons for children that are above grade level and it points us in the direction for activities for those students that will still be challenged by them.”
She added that the feedback from teachers has been positive for the program in its first year. “They are really enjoying it, they are finding the testing to be smooth. We’re still taking it apart and learning the components of it but teachers are finding it really useful so far,” she said.
While the iReady program is available for math, Fahey-Carrier said the school is currently using its own, more labor intensive benchmark program.
“Right now we are doing a lot more of a labor-intensive system. It takes a good 15 to 20 minutes minimum for a student who works quickly but can take far longer for a student who is struggling,” she said.
She said while the benchmark program has been successful, especially because of the conversation component between the teacher and student, the school is looking to improve it.
She said, “It is very work intensive and we really need to figure out a way to streamline this, but the thing we love about the math screener is that conversational piece, so right now we’re looking at different programs to adopt.”
During the meeting the School Committee also quickly passed four new policies about homeless students’ enrollment rights and services, educational opportunities for military children, educational opportunities for children in foster care, and health requirements.
The final order of business at the meeting was a discussion with the district’s Director of Finance and Operations Stephen Presnal about recent changes to the district’s lunch menu after some concerns were raised on social media by some parents.
“We’re going to more of a two week rotating menu, eliminating some choices that just were not selling,” he said, “There are really some things we’ve been hanging on to and giving the kitchen manager’s some flexibility, but the reality is some of these things just aren’t our top choices.”
He said that while the menu has gotten smaller, that doesn’t change the nutritional value of the meals. “While many of the foods that appear to be the same as food sold at the retail markets, the foods that are generally available tend to have lower sodium and fat to meet the USDA A-list standard.”
The Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School District School Committee will next meet on March 17.