Richfield School District's Mid-Year Report Shows Some Progress

The mid-year report on Richfield School District goals was a fairly positive at Monday night’s school board meeting. The district's three main goals—to attract and retain students, raise overall performance and close performance gaps—were all covered in detail by :

1) Retaining Students

The goal to retain students has seen the most significant progress. In 2010, 74.5 percent of Richfield residents decided to keep their children in the district, according to Slotterback’s presentation. Keeping students is essential to a school district and Richfield has even seen a rise in new enrollments in the last couple years.

However, there is more room for improvement.

“[Now], our focus now is on the 1,262 Richfield student residents who decided to go elsewhere for their education,” Slotterback said.

2) Raising Overall Performance

Raising the overall performance of students has declined slightly, according to Slotterback. The average ACT score in 2010 was 20.3 which is down from 2009’s average score of 21.3.

However, Slotterback attributed the decline to the number of Hispanic students taking the ACT test doubling, thereby increasing the number of total students taking the test. Statistically, more students taking the test can cause averages to drop.

“If we can raise the ACT composite score along with raising the percent of students taking the test, we will be in good shape,” Slotterback said.

3) Closing Performance Gaps

Closing performance gaps, among some other similar subgroups, has seen the least amount of progress, Slotterback said.

“All districts are struggling with how to close achievement gaps. The public is not going to see a dramatic and rapid increase in all three goals. They need to be patient,” Slotterback said. “It may take five to seven years before we get valid assessments, but as long as we are seeing continual steady progress, we should be good.”

A presentation by students involved in the AVID program at Richfield’s middle and high school were a good example of how Richfield is trying to close the achievement gap.

AVID is a structured college-prep system that provides direct support for first generation college-goers. (RHS) has over 40 students involved in this program, according to Eric Hermann, AVID coordinator.

In other business, Kate Foate Trewick, Laurie TeBrake and Sarah Streitz gave a Mathematics program update to the board, asserting that issues of professional development, consistency, coherence, 8^th grade algebra readiness, problem solving and communication and differentiation, had all been addressed.

In addition, ongoing priorities for the math program include: Increasing the number of students who successfully pass the MCA II test, increasing the number of students who complete four years of math instead of only three years and to work with the to provide the best options for students.

Finally, all the following items were approved by the board:

• Board Policies 601, 610 and 612 were approved by the board, as presented by Chief of Staff Kate Foate Trewick;
• The bid authorization for Public Address Systems in the Richfield Middle School and was approved;
• Authorization of 65 Passenger School Bus Lease/Purchase was approved;
• School/Vehicle Lease Purchase/Authorization was approved;
• Roof Bid Authorization for Richfield Middle School was approved;
• Sabbatical Leave for 2011-12 was approved for Jennifer Kersten, a physics and chemistry teacher at Richfield High School;
• Donations from Target Corporation, , Scott Wright and Horace Mann Insurance and from E.F. Engineering, Inc. were all accepted.

The next school board meeting will be Feb. 22 starting at 7 p.m. in the District Board Room at RHS.