Neelyville schools develop improvement plan

Over the last year, teachers and administration with the Neelyvile R-IV School District met to discuss the comprehensive school improvement plan (CSIP) for 2020-25.

While this is a living document, it provides a rough set of goals to work toward.

The district’s mission statement is Together Inspiring Growth Ensuring Repeated Success for each and every student.

Neelyville’s CSIP addresses the five annual performance review (APR) standards of academic achievement, subgroup achievement, college and career readiness, attendance and graduation rate.

In three of the last five years, the district saw an increase in its overall APR score, reaching 100% for the 2018-19 school year.

The scores for 2019-20 have not been released yet, and will be impacted because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Academic, subgroup achievement

For academic achievement and subgroup achievement in math, the district plans to move from on-track up to target through project-based learning, multi-step problems, math facts and utilization of intervention time.

For the project-based learning initiative, the 2020-21 school year will serve as a planning period to figure out.

An action plan for the science part of these standards will be evaluated after this year.

For social studies, which was recently added to APR, the district’s goal is to be on target. The action plan for it will also be developed after this year.

Part of the academic and subgroup achievement standards also relate to hiring highly qualified staff members.

Under this, the district has four areas to focus on; teacher of the year program, morale boosters, financial incentives and a “grow our own” program.

The teacher of the year program started with the 2019-20 school year.

Financial incentives includes proposing a raise to the base salary every June when working on the coming year’s budget and administration exploring an incentive program to reduce employee absenteeism.

The CSIP also lists a community action survey to help develop plans going forward.

College and Career Readiness

In the 2018-19 APR, the district scored below the state average for college and career placement.

According to the CSIP, the district plans to encourage enrollment in vocational credits and dual enrollment credits.

Part of that, for those students who plan to attend college, is to improve the district’s ACT scores through additional preparation and simulated practice.

It also includes working with students to develop their career pathways and providing resources to them.

Attendance

The district scored slightly above the state average for student attendance at 91.8%.

Discussion on attendance improvement was tabled for this school year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, a general idea is to provide student incentives for attendance.

The district plans to encourage students to eat breakfast along with addressing other food needs and educating on the effects of substance abuse.

Graduation rate

The goal is for all students to graduate.

Under the most recent data, Neelyville’s four-year graduation rate was 96.97% and went up to 100% for the five-year rate.

To improve that rate, the plan is to continue identifying at-risk behaviors for students and helping set up future goals.