The Jefferson City Public School Board opened Monday's meeting with a closed session to discuss the leasing, purchase or sale of real estate and personnel records.
Board member Pam Murray objected to going into closed session. And fellow board member Michael Couty said during the meeting he felt uncomfortable going into closed session, but during the roll call vote on closing the session, he voted "yes."
After the meeting, Murray said she still felt the material discussed did not warrant a closed session meeting, but she could not disclose any details as to why it should have been open.
Once the board entered back into open session, school officials announced progress with their partnership with the International Center for Leadership Education.
On Monday, elementary teachers spent their first day narrowing in on the Missouri Learning Standards to determine which ones are the most essential, said Gretchen Guitard, assistant to the superintendent for curriculum and staff services.
The first session on curriculum focused on English language arts for elementary students, she said. Within that category there are more than 70 standards, which is too expansive for faculty to teach students on an in-depth and rigorous level.
ICLE representatives are helping JCPS create district-wide focus areas to help eliminate curriculum inconsistencies on a building by building level.
The overarching "anchor standards" for elementary English language arts were reading, speaking and listening, writing and language. Staff are zeroing in on about one-fourth of the 70-plus standards as the focal points for instruction.
Guitard likened the process to building a fence: once you have your four corner posts, the rest of the fence falls into place. The district is doing the same thing with the state standards.
Kathy Foster, assistant to the superintendent for elementary education, said, "I think it's one of the most meaningful things I've seen, and I've been here a really long time.
"It was the first time teachers have been exposed to the ICLE process, and they were collaborating on how to focus on instructional time and how the learning should build vertically," she said.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is in the process of rewriting the Missouri Learning Standards, but Guitard doesn't anticipate the changes in standard will have a big impact on what the district has been doing with ICLE.
The district will continue honing in on English language arts standards with middle school and high school teachers and then move on to math. She anticipates the district will work on those two subjects until the spring and then move on to other subjects, such as science or social studies.
JCPS has 455 courses, and the work with ICLE will eventually have an impact on every course during the district's three-year partnership with ICLE, she said.
The district is also in the midst of creating a predictor model that forecasts how JCPS will score on upcoming APRs (Annual Performance Report).
The APR is scored based on five categories: academic achievement, subgroup achievement, college and career readiness, attendance, and college and career readiness.
Some of the categories, like attendance or college and career readiness, are fairly easy to predict, said Dawn Berhorst, assistant to the superintendent for student information, planning and assessment.
However, academic achievement and graduation can be difficult to determine, she said. The district collects some post-graduation information from students, but that information is difficult to predict unless they look at trend data.
In terms of academic achievement, Berhorst said the district is working with ICLE to find an assessment that aligns closely to the state's standards, which should help the district forecast its academic achievement.
By creating APR predictor data, the district can determine which areas need improvement throughout the year and adjust accordingly.
In the coming months, Berhorst said she'll have data to present to the board. The next step will be using the data in a way that's beneficial to teacher instruction, she said.