During the Edmonds School Board (ESD) meeting held on October 13th at 6:30 pm, the main focus of the school board was students’ education and how it has been developed or “set back.”
The younger students of the ESD are of the Pre-K program and elementary school level, which was recently decided that there will be certain changes made. The ESD’s Pre-K program has been open to all families that are a part of the district. The elementary schools will now need better instruction for science subjects while walking and treading with care on materials ordered, according to school board member Lara Drew.
¨We need to make sure subjects are more rounded,¨ MTHS School Board Representative Paxtyn Merten said.
Math and science teams, partnerships that are putting together ways to help lower income families and the students with educational programs are also doing better, more kids have joined programs thanks to partnerships. Though, while going from elementary to secondary school in the ESD, there is a 20 percent gap for those that are exceeding standards but don’t qualify for gifted programs.
Being extremely intelligent could mean that students can qualify for the gifted program; there is no waiting list, students just have to qualify for the program to be placed in. This program has about 1 percent of the students in the ESD currently enrolled.
The ethnicities of the ESD are “even” across the board, no specific one stands out, making this the most positive educational program that the district provides.
Although, there seems to be a plan for most of the students; yet, for the students that do not qualify, there seems to be no plan and it was discussed on how the district needs to meet the needs of these students.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) has shown some flaws according to the Student Learning Report. The test has been determined to be too complex, as the scores had an average difference of 20 points and the cut off grade is different from other districts.
Plus, there have been multiple delays with the test, for example the time the test was sent out to schools, the grading process and the delivery of the scores to the students’ homes on time. Despite these problems, the consensus of the board is that these are simply kinks in the program that will be fixed in time to come.
The last concern stated by the Student Board was from MTHS junior Danielle Strohl, over the fact that students participating in Running Start can no longer come in on Saturdays to make up their SATs, causing the students to skip class in order to take the test. This concern will be looked into and discussed by Superintendent Nick Brossoit, hopefully to be cleared up by the next school board meeting or SAT testing.
Jacob Knight • Oct 23, 2015 at 5:37 am
I want to know why the school district doesn’t do anything to promote the gifted program. There is a student I know of who would have benefitted from and most definitely would have qualified for the gifted program in elementary school. Our elementary school, however, did not know of this program in ESD. This student was able to join the program in the eighth grade, but that was only one year out of six that could have helped this student achieve more. I think all schools and staff should, one, be aware of programs in the district, and two, make students and parents aware of or recommend these programs.