The Winona Area Public Schools school board met on Thursday, Nov. 21, for a hearing about the Worlds Best WorkForce and regular business after.
Maurella Cunningham, director of learning and teaching at the district office explained the results from the 2018-19 WBWA plan and described the WBWA plan for 2019-20.
In the 2018-19 school year, the district met two of their seven goals detailed in the 2018-19 WBWA plan.
Those two goals were to decrease the reading proficiency score gap between white students and students of color and American-Indian students and the district was able to raise enrollment in preschool.
The five goals not met included the four-year graduation rates from Winona Senior High School and the Winona Learning Center.
The goal for Winona Senior High School was to increase graduation rates from 93% to 94%. The rate ended up decreasing from 93% to 91.9%.
Another goal was to close the gap between white students, students of color and American-Indian students on the math proficiency part of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments.
“In Math, the difference in percent proficient on the MCA assessment between white students & students of color and American Indian students will decrease from 26.7% to 20%, for all grade levels tested,” the 2018-19 WBWF plan read.
Other goals not met included kindergarten letter sounds, third-grade reading level increase, and average ACT scores increase.
Cunningham described WBWF goals for the 2019-20 school year.
The basis of most of the goals did not change from the 2018-19 WBWF plan to the 2019-20 WBWF plan.
For example, the goal to close the gap in math proficiency MCA scores between white, colored and American-Indian students stayed the same. The only part that changed was the starting point to reflect the increased gap from the previous year.
“In Math, the difference in percent proficient on the MCA assessment between white students & students of color and American Indian students will decrease from 25.3% in 2019 to 20% in 2020, for all grade levels tested,” the 2019-20 WBWF plan states as the goal.
The only goal that changed was the four-year graduation rates.
For the 2019-20 WBWF plan, the goal is to have an increase in four-year graduation rates at the Winona Senior Highschool from 93% to 94% and an increase from 13.2% to 14% at the Winona Area Learning Center.
One goal was added to the 2019-20 WBWF plan.
The new goal is to have high school juniors who take a college or career readiness assessment to have scores no lower than 85%.
The board will hear a revised version of the 2019-20 WBWF plan on Thursday, Dec. 5.
School Board Chair, Nancy Denzer said she looks forward to seeing the plan written in a meaningful way.
“I really want to see some SMART goals and things that we can achieve and I really want to see the whole Worlds Best Workforce written in a way that is meaningful,” Denzer said.
SMART goals are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
In the regular meeting, the school board heard from speakers on a variety of topics.
“We want staff members to present not necessarily administrators,” Denzer said.
One presentation Denzer said she enjoyed was a report from staff members about the progress of a new program called Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports.
Each school in the district has at least one teacher heading the program in that school. Each is seeing tremendous results in the beginning stages of implementation.
The school board also discussed the process of adding a student chair to the board.
School Board Clerk Michael Hanratty brought the idea to the board after attending the annual conference last year and meeting other district’s student representatives.
“He got excited about it and wanted to do it,” Denzer said. “So we are going to shepherd it in and see what happens.”
The next school board meeting will be Dec. 5 at 6 p.m. at Winona City Hall.
