School board reviews curriculum progress

The Perry County District 32 School Board spent a majority of its latest meeting on the curriculum progress report. The district created a 10-person curriculum assessment team as part of its Comprehensive School Improvement Plan.
“In our CSIP we laid out a goal that said that by the end of the school year the math and ELA goal would meet or exceed a growth of five percent,” Curriculum and Instruction Director Carrie Tripp said. “The group has taken over the process and put in the time and went above and beyond.”
The team started in November and started to create a curriculum handbook for teachers and parents to read so that it is an open book and see clearly what is expected from students. The team met in January and started on the template to write the curriculum.
Teachers have gone from a five year curriculum cycle to a two year cycle.
“The curriculum has been a five-year cycle since the dawn of time,” Karen Kreiger said. “We ordered textbooks and we didn’t want to ask for money for all those textbooks in one year. So we decided out in five years. With us writing our own curriculum, we are pulling those subjects from places and shortened it to a two-year cycle. Year one is accumulating and year two is to put it into place.”
Tripp said that the templates make it easier for new teachers as well.

“We wanted to include all the things for new teachers so that we could hand them this and they have everything they need for the year right at their fingertips,” Tripp said.
Tripp showed the board test score data for math and ELA to see if students grew over the course of the year until now. The goal was to grow by 10 units.
To start the meeting, the board recognized 11 Academic All-State cross country runners (Tegan Bishop, (senior) Ryeland Tanz, Mason Zoellner, Ezekiel Pyland, Gwen Newbrough, Makayla Iffert, Olivia Iffert, Katie Baggett, Micah Brown, Marcas Smith, Brandon Roth and three cheerleaders (Brianna Kimmet, Taylor Collard and Xavier Pfaff), who earned All-American status.
The board also rejected the Middle School Gym re-roofing bids in part because the timeline has changed and the companies will be given the necessary paperwork.
“One company was given the amendments and the other wasn’t,” Board President Nancy Voelker said. “So to make everything fair we did it this way. The company will have to suck the gravel off the roof and it will be louder than we thought and it would make it hard for instruction to take place. We would like to push that back to the summer than the spring.”
The board approved the paper bid from Sam’s Club for $38.00 per case.
The next board meeting will be March 15