Although graduation for seniors is imminent and students are close to another summer break, the Eastern Regional High School Board of Education held its monthly meeting Wednesday, June 12 to review multiple school items from the previous year as well as the upcoming year.
At the meeting, Eastern’s next superintendent, Robert Cloutier, currently the director of curriculum, instruction and professional development, presented the board with a status report of the district’s 2018-2019 goals.
The goals range from short to long term, focusing largely on the development of school programs to increase student opportunities and learning, as well as a three-year effort to curb student lateness throughout the school year.
The first goal Cloutier reported on was Eastern’s aspiration to achieve Future Ready School “Silver Medal” certification by 2021, undertaking a multi-year process leading to the creation of a five-year strategic plan.
“This year with the District Advisory Council, we were very focused on working towards developing a strategic plan, which is the most crucial step we need to reach the next level of achievement as a Future Ready School,” said Cloutier. “That is to align our technology goals and resources with curriculum, and really with all district endeavors. We took some really good steps with [the District Advisory Council].”
Cloutier said the council helped develop ideas and thoughts that will later be turned into goals for the 2019-2020 school year, alongside additional multi-year goals currently underway. Goals for the upcoming school year, Cloutier said, will be presented at the August board meeting.
The district also hoped to achieve the Performance Report targets for the PARCC test in all groups and subgroups as another goal, while also gathering 95 percent participation or higher.
At the meeting, Cloutier presented the board with data showing Eastern Regional students met the target for all groups and subgroups in math, while also meeting the overall target in English language arts and in seven of the eight subgroups, with students with disabilities being the only subgroup that did not meet the target.
Eastern was able to reach 95 percent participation in PARCC the previous two years, after failing to reach the mark the two years prior, showing significant growth over the years.
In an effort to improve student participation in school, another goal was to reduce student lateness by 10 percent over a three-year period, with this year being the final year of the goal.
During the 2015-2016 school year, which was used as the baseline by which the school hoped to reduce lateness numbers, Eastern reported 9,290 incidents of students being late to school. After three years of initiatives, Eastern was successful in achieving its goal.
“We were able to meet the goal, and that was to reduce student lateness to school by 10 percent,” said Principal Robert Tull Jr. “We actually did better, it was closer to 12 percent. But it’s something that we feel we want to continue to impress upon students, that we need them in school and on time.”
Tull said the school’s new bell schedule, since looking to reduce student lateness became a goal over three years ago, has been a large help. The majority of student lateness incidents occur near the end of the school year between March and May. Remarkably, Eastern was able to reduce student lateness from 6,035 during the 2015-2016 school year to 3,656 during the current school year, a drop of approximately 40 percent.
The final goal for the district was to reduce freshman course failures by 50 percent from the 2015-2016 school year over the next three years, something Cloutier said was a lofty goal from the start.
Originally the district looked to set the goal at a reduction of 10 percent, however it was bumped up to 50 percent to be ambitious in assisting incoming freshmen students.
“Moving forward, we have put some really new programs in place for freshmen that did not exist prior to the bell schedule and prior to this goal, and this is going to continue,” said Cloutier. “We did see a 12 percent decrease in the total number of students that failed a course comparing last year to this year.”
Cloutier says more data will be available for the board to review at its August meeting after grades are finalized and made available at the conclusion of the current school year.
In other news:
- Superintendent Harold Melleby Jr. reported that Eastern Regional had two reported HIB cases last month, with one being founded and one being unfounded.
- After having approved a girls golf team at Eastern at its last meeting, Melleby reported to the board that a second interest meeting for the team was able to recruit 20 girls for next year’s team. It needs 10 to run as a sport next year.
- Eastern Regional hopes to have all open positions that the school is advertising interviewed and have backgrounds checks complete within the next two weeks.
- Cloutier’s contract for superintendent of schools was approved by the board after being received back from the executive county superintendent, effective Aug. 1 through June 30, 2024.
- The contract for Diana Schiraldi as business administrator for July 1 through June 30, 2020, was approved by the board after being received back from the executive county superintendent.
- Joyce Fang was named the Scholar of the Month for June at Eastern Regional during the meeting.
