ATHOL – The Athol Royalston Regional School District School Committee Wednesday night received the results of a district review carried out by the state in January. The report was presented to the committee by Laura Richane, Supervisor of the Office of District Reviews of the state Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education and by district superintendent Darcy Fernandes.
The review looked at six areas: leadership and governance; curriculum and instruction, assessment; student support; human resources and professional development, and; financial and asset management.
The only area where no challenges were identified was that of leadership and governance.
“Leaders concentrated on a focused number of priority areas,” said Richane, “and they used they used those areas to plan and to develop policies. This is really important, because it can be very difficult for districts to have that focus. Often, there are so many different needs and so many different things that need to be done that it can be really tempting to go in a lot of different directions. (We) found that there are clear priorities laid out in the district plan and planning processes that really keep everyone focused.”
Richane also said, “There is very nimble resource allocation and leaders are thinking constantly about how best to use available resources.”
When it comes to curriculum and instruction, the report found what it referred to as “a generally high incidence of characteristics of high-quality instruction in elementary (K-4) and middle-grade (5-8) classrooms.” It noted the district “has implemented a number of… district-wide initiatives to improve curriculum and instruction.”
The review also found, however, that there was “a generally lower incidence of characteristics of effective instruction at the high school.”
“First of all, does that mean there was no quality instruction at the high school?” Richane asked rhetorically. “No, it does not. This is not an indictment of any individual teachers. But, what we are seeing, is when we used our (assessment) tool and looked at several elements that show high quality instruction, there was a much lower incidence of that.”
“This is a common finding in most of our report,” she said. “It’s something we’ve been thinking a lot about; how we can, at the state level, better support high schools.”
Fernandes told the committee a number of steps are being taken to make improvements at the high school. Among those, she said, are the hiring of academic coaches to work with teachers, providing teachers with clear goals for instruction, giving teachers non evaluative feedback from department heads and coaches, establishing monthly walkthroughs.
Regarding financial and asset management, the report found the district has been losing a large number of students to school choice, and that district budget documents “are not clear, comprehensive, and easily accessible by all constituents.”
Fernandes said that steps have already been taken to address those concerns.
While several challenges were found in the other areas covered by the review, the report was, said Richane, generally positive.