NEWS
School Improvement Plans help define district priorities - CHS
Dec. 7, 2010 – As part of the planning process in the Cohoes City Schools, a district leadership team and teams at each school write improvement plans.
These plans help shape decisions about district programs and ensure faculty and staff are constantly working to improve teaching, learning and student outcomes.
The building-level plans are revised yearly by the "building leadership team” at each school. The school teams meet over the summer to discuss goals for their buildings and strategies for meeting those goals. The teams take into account student achievement data and survey results, among other items, when identifying their building's priorities and goals. Once a new plan is written, the entire faculty votes to approve the plan, endorsing it as a map for school improvement.
The administration and Board of Education rely on these as guides for understanding what is important and unique to each building, as well as the district as a whole. District priorities for student learning are a key component to the school budget process.
At this week's Board of Education Workshop, which will be held at the library at Cohoes High School at 6:30 p.m., the BOE will hear directly from ALS and CMS staff about their school's plan. Although the discussion will not be focused on actual numbers (the state budget picture and process will be more clear this spring), understanding the programming and priorities at each of the buildings is crucial to the whole picture.
Cohoes High School
Cohoes High School is focusing on discipline, improving attendance and academic achievement in particular through its Building Improvement Plan for the 2010-11 school year.
In each of these areas, the building planning team has developed specific goals for the school community, including decreasing the number of discipline referrals, increasing student attendance to 95 percent, increase the percentage of graduates earning a New York State Regents Diplomas and decrease the number of freshman who are failing courses.
Each of these goals has an action plan and a multi-tiered process behind it as well.
To improve discipline referrals, the school is implementing the Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports program for all grade levels at the school, and increasing anti-bullying awareness, in part through a focused week during the month of October.
School leaders are hoping to improve the attendance rate among high schoolers by fostering greater student-home-staff connections, and by creating incentives for students and recognizing those who are meeting monthly attendance expectations.
For the current school year, Cohoes High School also expects to increase the percentage of graduates earning New York State Regents Diplomas. This academic goal will be met by not only helping students in class, encouraging involvement and careful progress monitoring, but also by providing more opportunities for college preparedness and giving staff more opportunities for professional development.
Increasing the number of ninth-grade students failing one of more courses is also a targeted item for the building leadership plan. The plan hopes that in part, by increasing student-home communication and the students' connectedness to the school, academic achievement may improve. Another goal of the high school leadership is to expand the transition programming that is available for incoming ninth graders to include the Freshman Transition Evening, Ninth-Grade Transition Day in September, Homeroom Buddies and the Mentor programs.
