JCPS board gets data about last school year

Jefferson City Public Schools administration building at 315 E. Dunklin St.
Jefferson City Public Schools administration building at 315 E. Dunklin St.

Jefferson City Public Schools' Board of Education heard ideas Monday night on how to measure its progress in the future.

The board's work session reviewed the district's long- and short-term goals, making sure the most helpful kind of data is being collected and displayed.

Superintendent Larry Linthacum explained at Monday's administrative retreat, some updates were made to the district's strategic plan.

"We're making headway," he said, with the previous long-term goal of increasing the district's four-year graduation rate of 81 percent. Data presented showed the 2015-16 school year's four-year graduation rate was 85.5 percent, and 2016-17 was 84.4 percent - down, but also the second highest since 2010-11.

He said the new long-term goal will be to ensure every student in the district is at their appropriate reading grade level or above, and students with individualized needs are meeting their educational goals, too.

"We feel like if we do that, then graduation rates and those other things will take care of (themselves)," he said.

Short-term goals are still being fine-tuned, Linthacum said, adding attendance and out-of-classroom discipline rates are being examined.

The district's attendance rate last year also dropped to 85.3 percent from 86.9 percent the year before. The rate was 87.3 percent in the 2013-14 school year, and 85.5 percent the year after. Most individual schools in the district followed the same trend as the district overall.

District assessment data presented Monday showed some significant gains in the percentage of students at or above their grade levels in reading and math at the end of the last school year compared to the start.

However, the gains diminished the older students were.

Brian Shindorf, the district's chief of learning, warned state assessment data presented is still very preliminary, but showed a 2.6 point decrease in English scores overall, a 4.2 point increase in math scores and a 3-point increase in science.

Board President Steve Bruce said the board is not afraid to hear bad news, and the information presented about remaining challenges helps them make the correct decisions going forward to gain more improvement.

"We're doing what we can to make sure that resources and attention is being paid to those areas, to move those levers, to improve the district performance that we all want and expect. To me, I think that's the biggest takeaway, that we have a good plan in place" that's still being worked through, Bruce said.

"I'm in my third year here, and this is the first time I've seen something where everything is cohesively brought together, both as an indicator of where we are and using (it) as a jumping off point for moving forward," board member Pam Murray said.

The board also heard from Brenda Hatfield, the district's director of quality improvement, who shared ideas about some data points the board could be gathering and sharing with the public on the district's data dashboard, which might help inform their decisions in the future.

In addition to metrics like graduation, discipline and attendance rates and APR and evaluation scores, she said the district could also be gathering information relevant to the furtherance of its values of good stewardship and promoting community partnerships:

For stewardship: expenditure per pupil, the district's bond rating, the fund balance of the Jefferson City Public Schools Foundation, food service program participation and the amount of grant gifts that the district receives.

For community partnerships: the average years of service teachers have, staff retention rates, workplace referrals, staff satisfaction, the average fill rate and qualifications of substitute teachers, the level of community volunteer participation in buildings and the number of volunteer hours contributed by students, families and staff.

Board member Michael Couty also thought of another metric, family participation rates in activities.

Hatfield admitted some of these measurements would be long-term goals that would take time to collect data on, and they may not be updated very often, but they could still be important.