Hazelwood Board Gets Updated

In Improvement Grant, Focus Schools

             By Jeremey Thomas

The Hazelwood school board recent meeting was short, but contained a few detailed oriented presentations on issues and progress around the Hazelwood District community.  Lisa Strauther assistant superintended for instruction started things off with providing a presentation over the School Improvement Grant (SIG) and an update on focus schools. Schools in the district start August 12.

In the presentation for SIG it described the background of the program, improvements needed, and listed area schools that were identified as SIG schools for the 2013-2014 calendar year. The state determines which schools are SIG schools by identifying the lowest achieving ones in their respective district.

There were three area schools that fell under this category: Hazelwood East High School, Hazelwood Central Middle School, and Southeast Middle School. The selected schools are now on a track of improvement and target future success and are eligible to benefit from school improvement grants for the next  three years. The 2013-2014 SIG allocations for the  listed schools are as follow: Hazelwood East High School- $572,150, Hazelwood Central Middle School- $84,895, Southeast Middle School- $103,075.

“In order to achieve our SIG goals, we believe student performances in attendance, academics and discipline along with highly qualified staff and Parent and community involvement will be key,” Strauther said.

Along with these details included three areas of targeted upgrades that mentioned Instructional Focus update, Staffing Focus update, and Parental Involvement update. For the instructional focus category emphasis on writing across contents, student

engagement, and Implementation of common core standards in Math and English language arts were among the key features mentioned.

When it came to staffing focus the targeted walk throughs and professional development were the most important attributes for success. As far as parental involvement goes increased membership in Parent/ Teacher/ Student Association and increased communication with documentation were the main targeted focus updates.

There was a brief description of focus schools and which area schools were identified as such. Focus school were described as schools whose student gap groups are among the lowest performing in state over the past 3 years. Larimore Elementary and Townsend Elementary were identified as focus school for 2013-2014.

Jeff Haug assistant superintended for instruction followed this presentation by providing an in depth view of Edgenuity, which is a credit recovery program for students at all three Hazelwood high schools. The main reason behind the program is to allow those seniors who are in danger of failing first semester Algebra II classes, a chance to earn more credits in order  that they may graduate on time. A total of $15,660 from the curriculum budget has currently been used to pay for 60 Edgenuity Site Licenses between all three high schools.

“I can confidently say that all the seniors that participated in the Edgenuity courses graduated on time last school year” Haug said She also added that parents and students overwhelmingly appreciated the Hazelwood School District’s support. The conclusion of the meeting did not feature any patron questions or concerns.