School Board
Prior to the official start of the School Board meeting on Monday September 18, an auditor was on hand to report to the Board and school officials on the findings of the official audit. The state requires an audit every two years, but Cameron does one every year. The district overall is in good shape, the auditor said the district is healthy not wealthy. The state allows the district to get down to 3% in their bank, which is kind of like a savings account - the auditor would never recommend allowing that to happen. The Cameron School District is right at 30%. The audit process starts in May with preliminary information and continues with checking all the books to be sure due diligence was done throughout.
During the administrative reports High School Principal Brett Jones spoke to the board about the recent presentation by students to the Missouri Community Betterment judges. Students made a presentation about community improvement projects they have worked on and members of Interact made a presention with advisor Carmen Buller. It was a great experience for them and they did a great job, Jones said. There are approximately 100 students in the building taking some kind of college credit classes, not including the AP classes. The high school is looking at something different to prepare students for the ACT test, such as an ACT boot camp – which might entail spending a couple of hours on one day to focus on each section of the ACT. Participation in the program would be incentivized in some way
CVMS Principal Tiffani Collins said her leadership team will be working with smart goals with the intention of having them posted in the building by mid Oct in the data rooms and working on standards based grading. CVMS hosted Back to School night with 7th grade having the highest attendance with 30% of parents – so they won Sonic drinks. A BMX Bike Show will be held Wednesday October 4 in the high school Acuity in grade has started, Collins said and they are hoping to have tutoring follow based on MAP and acuity scores. Tutoring should begin in October.
Principal Laurie Medfford CIS Principal said DESE is providing information to unwrap the standards of the MAP testing for the teachers, telling them the highest level of questioning, how they will be tested and sample questions. Staff has already started using this information. CIS hosted Grandparents days, opening the building to grandparents to come and join students for breakfast and lunch. Were looking forward to having about 260 grandparents in the building. Map awards were on Friday, September 22. CIS is adjusting to standards based grading and plan to have it up and going by the quarter.
Parkview had a very successful Grandparents Day celebration, according to Principal Angela Ormsby, which they stretched out over two days and two sessions. It has been part of their ongoing process to improve communications between parents and teachers and there were over 400 grandparents who participated. Ormsby will be a member of the Kiwanis Club, representing the Cameron School district and said she is very excited for the opportunity. Ormsby said she has a personal goal to send out a newsletter out to parents quarterly. Ormsby also took a moment to recognize all the sponsors of the Bucket Fillers program.
Special education is continuing to work through the over forty children in special education in the district. The staff is also working on checking over their testing data, celebrating their successes and seeing where there is room for improvement.
CIS presented their building improvement plan – According to Mefford everything they do stems from their vision and mission “We are a community, learning for life, leading the way, every student, every teacher, every day.”
A point of reference was the data presented from 2011 through 2017 and there was an increase in the top two levels of MAP data, but Meffford said they do not see it as a stopping point, but rather something to continue build on.
The staff of CIS went on to discuss the strategies in place to help their students succeed. They presented information for Math, Language Arts and Science which all include ways to work on subjects individually, with a partner and with individualized instruction. Attendance is monitored daily and incentives have been put in place to encourage good attendance for both students and teachers. Class Dojo is the main communication tool being utilized by CIS for communication between students and teachers and it appears to be working out well with 503 parents connected through the program. As part of the continuing efforts to retain qualified teachers CIS has implemented a Sunshine Committee to help with team building and to build culture among the teachers. Continuing information and attention to anti-bullying is another focus of CIS, including a monthly Dojo assembly where ways to deal with bullying are addressed.
Staff from Parkview presented their building improvement plan to the board. Attendance is one main area where Parkview contributes to district APR. Their goal is to have 90% of the students attending 90% of the time. Attendance incentives are offered monthly and at the end of each quarter. Attendance is tracked in notebooks so parents can see every month how their student is doing.
Another goal of Parkview is - by end of the school year 95% of students will be reading at or above grade level. A lot of things have been put in place to assist with this goal. All students receive instruction in small groups, they check out books in their reading level, students receive support during ability level groups, and students with greatest need will be offered individualized instruction. Lastly, students who are considered greatest at risk will be offered after school tutoring.
Another goal at Parkview is 80% of students will know 80% of sight word. Each teacher received a reading strategies book to help them present the sight words, teachers received training and information via Google docs over the summer, and teachers will continue professional development. Quarterly rewards will also be implemented for all grade levels, with Kindergarten actually beginning second quarter. The rewards are all themed around Hollywood Stars.
According to Ormsby, there was a slight dip in assessments last year in reading scores and the teachers determined through research the dip happened in sight words, so they are really working on those to improve those scores.
Standards based grading is another goal - all teachers will look over Math and Language Arts to be sure everything is aligned and be sure there are assessments to go along with them and also to be certain parents are being informed about any changes. All assessments will be made available to parents throughout the year and will be sent home at the end of the year for parents to review.
Parkview plans to increase to 44,000 books read by the end of the year, Part of the plan to increase reading is having open library times from 7:15 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. and Monday and Thursday evenings from 5-7 p.m.
Increased parent communication is a goal Parkview is also working toward – many events and activities are planned throughout the year to increase parent and community involvement. Parkview also has a Facebook page to help keep parents and the community informed.
Ormsby said, “We’ve had a really strong start, looking forward to a great year, thank you for your support.”
The next meeting of the school board will be October 16 at 7 p.m.
