The Governing Board of the Benicia Unified School District voted unanimously to approve the Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) for each of the elementary schools after hearing goals presented by the principals.

According to Leslie Beatson, the assistant superintendent of educational services, the goal of the SPSA is to raise the academic performance of all students. The goals are aligned to the Local Control Accountability Plan, based on multiple data points, developed jointly with staff and site councils and are consistent in format across the district but reflect unique elements of each site.
The four principals delivered progress updates on the previous year’s goals, presented new ones and took questions from trustees.

Joe Henderson Elementary

Principal Carin Garton began by talking about last year’s goals, which were to have 100 percent of students show growth in the areas of literacy and mathematics and build community and mutual respect.

“When we wrote the goals last year, our intent was to show growth of individual students,” she said. “While some students didn’t show growth on each of the multiple measures, 99.6 percent did show growth on at least one.”

Subgoals of the third goal consisted of increasing attendance, decreasing tardy rate, increasing teacher feedback and raising the number of parent volunteers. The number of parent volunteers did increase from 325 in 2014-15 to 375 in 2015-16, but attendance experienced a slight drop, tardy rates increased by 313 students and teacher feedback was not formalized for the plan.

Garton’s new goals were to have the number of students meet or exceed grade level literacy and math standards by 5 percent and strengthen relationships among the school community by having 80 percent of staff, students and parents identify and demonstrate understanding of rules outlines by Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support Services.

Garton highlighted a team of teachers and parents who were working to implement PBIS during its first year at Joe Henderson. The team’s actions included creating surveys and presentations to staff and parents to determine rules, developing videos on the rules and creating a matrix and promotional materials for rules.

Trustee Stacy Holguin asked if there were motions in place to address the tardy issue. Garton said when she first became principal, tardies were a problem at Joe Henderson, so she implemented a rule that three tardies would equal a detention. The idea was to put pressure on parents to make them leave earlier so their children would not be late. As a result, tardies steadily decreased.

“When I put that measure in there, I really thought it was all padded and I was gonna do great because we needed to solve the problem,” she said. “But the teachers at the beginning of the year said ‘Oh, we don’t wanna do that to our kids anymore. Let’s stop doing it.’”

Garton obliged, but the number of tardies skyrocketed again so the rule was reinstated.

“It’s a little sting of a detention for the morning recess, and now kids are now at school on time,” she said.

Trustee Peter Morgan asked what the biggest worry for Joe Henderson was in terms of achievement.

“Our low socioeconomic don’t do as well,” Garton said. “That’s certainly a concern, but I think now the programs that we’re using— Workshop and Everyday Math— that kids are having a much more level playing field as far as curriculum goes.”

Mary Farmar Elementary

Principal Wendy Smith talked about the progress the school had made since the previous fall, including being named as a Gold Ribbon School.

“The information I’ll share tonight shows our hard work in continuing our progress,” she said. “Although measuring our students’ progress numerically through assessment data is important to see where we target our work and interventions, we do not define our students by our data.”

The previous year’s goals were for 100 percent of students to meet literacy proficiency on district benchmarks, 10 percent growth in math proficiency and student discipline to decrease by 50 percent. For the literacy goal, growth was achieved by kindergarteners and fourth-graders but not others. For the math goal, the CAASPP exam saw an overall increase among third through fifth graders as well as for special education students. However, the data for Hispanic students was slightly lower. The behavioral goal was not met because PBIS was not implemented. New goals were to have more students meet grade level proficiency in English Language Arts, increasing math proficiency to 75 percent and decreasing student discipline interaction by 50 percent.

Smith highlighted the Teacher’s College Affiliate School, which focuses on supporting students who do not meet grade level standards through the use of differentiated texts and read-alouds.

Robert Semple Elementary

Principal Christina Moore presented the previous year’s goals, which were to increase math and ELA proficiency levels by 10 percent and create a positive school culture through PBIS implementation. Kindergarteners and fourth and fifth-graders exceeded the baseline standards for math, and third and fifth-graders exceeded the baseline standards for ELA. The goal to reduce suspensions by 50 percent could not be measured because the system used to measure it was not launched, but the goal to implement the first tier of PBIS was met and it has been embraced by students and staff, Moore said.

Moore’s new goals were to increase math and ELA proficiency by 5 percent and reduce office referrals and suspensions by 50 percent.

Moore highlighted the second tier of PBIS, which aims to continue to reinforce the three Bs: Be Safe, Be Responsible and Be Respectable. According to Moore, all students and staff know the three Bs, and the school has partnered with Liberty High School, which has sent its students to Semple to model the three Bs.

Matthew Turner Elementary

Principal Stephen Slater presented the previous year’s goals set forth by his predecessor, Beatson. These included having all students increase their literacy proficiency by 15 percent in the areas of research/inquiry and comprehension, increasing math proficiency by the same percentage in the areas of problem-solving and modeling analysis and meeting or exceeding 80 percent satisfaction on rigor and culture of diversity. Kindergarteners through second-graders remained at 79 percent in literacy comprehension, while third through fifth-graders experienced growth in both the research/inquiry and comprehension areas. Meanwhile, third through fifth-graders experienced nearly a 40 percent growth in math proficiency, and the parent satisfaction for the third goal registered at 78 percent.

Slater’s new goals included increasing the percentage of students meeting or exceeding proficiency on the ELA portion of the CAASPP from 59 to 70 percent, increase math proficiency levels by at least 10 percent, and continue to ensure that family events are ethnically diverse, the understanding of homework practices is based on the best practices and the rigor of instruction is appropriate.

Holguin noted that while there are programs to help disadvantaged students, there didn’t seem to be much to reward gifted students.

“What we expect in every classroom is that the instruction is differentiated so that when students in fifth grade are reading at a third-grade level, you’re obviously challenging them to read at the grade level they’re at,” Slater said. “Some students may be taking it to another level, trying to get to the sixth and seventh-grade range. There’s the myON program. We have a lot of after school programs too, like the Lego Club. We have a STEM room that is challenging students, and we have signup for teachers to sign up for the STEM room.”

“One thing I admire about this readers and writers workshop program is that you walk into these classrooms and you see these academic conversations that are taking place among first-graders, third-graders, fourth-graders…that’s high level,” Slater added. “You go to a college classroom and talk to some of the professors, they’ll tell you ‘Wow, you’re really able to get the dialogue going and have an academic conversation and get them to cite evidence for their statements is really difficult.’ First-grade classrooms are already doing that right now. It’s a really exciting time.”

The board unanimously approved the SPSAs for each elementary school. Benicia Middle School and Benicia High School’s principals will present their SPSA goals at a November meeting.

In other business, Child Nutrition Director Tania Courtney highlighted the Food and Nutrition Services program, which recently received a grant from Kaiser Permanente to fund Harvest of the Month, which helps provide nutritional recipes and support school gardens to harvest vegetables for the schools’ salad bars.

The board will next meet Thursday, Nov. 3.