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Date: 12/17/2019
CHICOPEE – The state of the Chicopee Public School District was a significant topic of discussion at the Dec. 4 Chicopee School Committee Meeting.
The meeting started with a presentation by Assistant Superintendent for Instruction and Accountability, Lynn Clark, which took up a large portion of the meeting.
Clark, who is slated to take over as superintendent of the district when current superintendent Richard Rege retires at the end of January, started her presentation by noting a decrease in enrollment throughout the years. From the 2015 - 16 to the 2019 - 20 school year, Clark said there was a decline in enrollment of about 1,000 students.
She then went on to also mention a significant increase in the number of “economically disadvantaged” students enrolled in the district. “Economically disadvantaged in 2015 -16, we were at 25 percent and in 19-20 we’re in 56 percent. What that means is that’s not the free and reduced forms, those are direct certs,” she explained. “So that affects families that have SNAP or WIC services. Any sort of benefit that they’re getting that directly comes from the government. In 15-16 that was 25 percent of our families, and in 19-20 that’s 56 percent of our families or students I should say.”
Other demographics noted were the number of students with disabilities, which Clark said has “pretty much stayed the same,” and English language learners, went up by “about two percent.”
After addressing the demographics, Clark discussed how high school students had handled the “next generation of MCAS,” which they had taken during the 2018 - 19 school year. Clark explained, “All students took an assessment that was completely built from the 2017 standards in ELA and math.”
She said while this was the first time the students had taken the test and the standards were significantly more rigorous, “the state will maintain the same passing threshold for graduation requirements for the next two years.”
“So the state recognized that the next generation MCAS is much more rigorous and they said ‘While we don’t want the drop off on graduation rates at this point, so we’d like to keep it until everyone’s caught up to the 2017 standards and the way of testing,’” she explained.
Also taking new MCAS for the first time last year were kindergarteners through eighth graders, who took the next generation science and technology assessment tests. This year, Clark noted more changes for ninth graders, who will be taking the science MCAS test online for the first time. Tenth graders, however, will continue to take the test on paper for one more year.
This, she said, will be a challenge for the high school. “That right now is a challenge I should have added to the challenges for the high school because if they have ninth graders taking the test they are going online with the completely new standards,” she noted. “if they have tenth graders that are taking a bio test, they are still grandfathered in with a combination of the old and new standards and it is still paper based.”
The next topic Clark touched on was how much or how little progress each school had made during the last year. She noted that during the 2018 - 19 school year, the district was in the “partially meeting standards” category. “I think we were at the 42nd or 43rd, that meant that we had 43 percent of our targets we’re meeting,” she said.
However, this year Clark said Chicopee has improved and made “substantial progress towards targets.” This, she said, has moved the district to the second-high category. Schools in the district that made substantial progress include Bellamy, Bowe, Bowie, Chicopee Comp., Dupont, Fairview, Lambert, Stefanik and Striver. Barry Elementary made moderate progress towards the targets while Robert R. Litwin School made limited or no progress.
Chicopee Comprehensive High School, Clark noted, did make some progress, but “were labeled in need of assistance because they’re in the 10th percentile of the state.”
“If you recall they were much lower than that at one point and they kinda bounced themselves out to the 18th percentile,” she said. “They didn’t quite have enough bounce to make it this year, so they do have state assistance this year.”
However, Dupont Middle School, which previously had state assistance during the ‘18 - ‘19 school year, no longer required state assistance during the ‘19 - ‘20 year. Clark said Bowe, Bowie and Dupont saw the largest improvements in meeting targets.
Despite an increase in economically disadvantaged students, Clark explained that one of the district’s strengths was that many schools “are closing the gap with the lowest achievers.”
She said, “High needs and economically disadvantaged subgroups continue to improve, some groups rank among the highest in the state. Streiber’s economically disadvantaged students score in the 85th percentile across the state, and their high needs subgroup ranks at the 91st percentile.”
She continued, “Barry and Stefanik’s economically disadvantaged groups are also ranked higher than the 80th percentile for statewide performance.”
While celebrating the district’s accomplishments, Clark also discussed the challenges the district had faced in recent years. One of those challenges, she noted, was “chronic absenteeism.”
“It certainly is a concern among the elementary schools when we have half days, many of them,” she explained. The schools, however, had begun to think about ways to combat the problem of absenteeism.
“Stefanik, on half days they were really struggling getting students there. So Mrs. Theriault has decided to try to schedule something on those mornings and it might be this holiday concert, it could be the bicycle man,” she said. “But if something is there that will get the students there. And ideally the families, so they’re picked up at 11:30 as well. So different schools are doing different things.”
Clark did note, however, that Chicopee Comp. had improved their attendance recently.
Finally, Clark went over what the district had accomplished during the 2018 - 19 school year.
Those accomplishments included:
• Implementing new core programs in ELA and math for grades six through 12
• Selecting and rolling out a new core math program for elementary schools
• Piloting a professional development menu to allow teachers to choose sessions they want to attend
• Beginning an administrative summit, which met three times last year and have already met once this school year.