Summary of the working session of the Collierville Schools board of education. This is from my notes and observations.

All Board members present. Attendance by a handful of the public, several central office staff, and Chip Blanchard from CHS.

First item is a preview of the proposed changes to the employment application policy to include the prospective employees’ agreement to notify the school system of any criminal activity that took place after start of employment, as well as any state sexual predator registrations.

Second item is the proposed policy on school attendance zones, and specifically the process to be followed to change them. The key items to note here are that necessary changes will be carefully weighed and planned, and will go through a public comment process prior to any vote. The basics:

  • intended to address any overcrowding, long-term capacity planning, feeder patterns and transportation concerns
  • when zoning changes are to be considered, a committee will be formed that includes representatives from all stakeholders, including the central office, the town, the schools, parent representative, etc.
  • school zone changes will be communicated in the spring prior to the school year they would go into effect
  • ample communication of any proposed changes will allow the public to provide input to the board before any vote
  • generally, the process would start in Oct/Nov in order to allow for a board vote in February or March
  • changes in attendance zones will have an impact on the ability to allow open enrollment of students as space at schools has a limit

Mr Hansen expressed the board’s desire to plan carefully and deliberately for school zone changes, as these are likely to attract passionate responses from the parents.

Mr Vaughan asked about grade restructuring – which Mr Aitken said would follow a similar process if considered.

The next agenda item is a presentation by Ms Claney and Ms Robbins on school district test results. At the time of the writing of this report, the presentation could be found at this link. Key statistics in these results show that Collierville Schools outperform the state averages across the board, generally by a very significant margin. Rather than averaging the Collierville schools’ scores, the presentation includes the range of scores, showing that EVERY Collierville school exceeds the averages.

It should be noted that usually, this data is in the principals’ hands by June, but was not made available by the state until the start of the school year this year. Ms Claney’s office estimated a predicted set of results, which turned out to be right in line with the actual results. This allowed Collierville Schools to plan and implement measures to address achievement gaps immediately.

The board discussed that it is very hard to improve performance when performance is already at a high level.

In essence, three Collierville Schools were identified as eligible for targeted assistance schools based on the highest % of economically disadvantaged students attending. These are, in order, Collierville Elementary, Bailey Station Elementary and Sycamore Elementary. Each of these schools was assigned an additional teacher and teachers’ aide to target any and all underperforming students, regardless of their economic status. This is expected to have a positive effect on the overall performance of the school, and the underperforming students specifically. These are paid for through (Federal) Title I funds. Federal monitors visited the district this week, and were impressed with the program already in effect for this school year.

After this update, the superintendent talked about the need to have a half-day board retreat scheduled in the near future to complete several required processes, including a self-evaluation, as well as establishing a formal mission and vision statement.

Mr Aitken also announced that 7887 students were enrolled in Collierville Schools by school day 11. This is 98.1% of the projected attendance, and expected to be stable. Schilling Farms Middle is at 1051 students, and Collierville High has 2179 students, 632 of which are freshmen. These numbers are high but in line with expectation. As a result of these enrollment numbers, the State Department of Education has agreed to start a true-up of funding after day 40 enrollment numbers are reported. The first regular payment from the state has already been received.

Mr Aitken said transportation is stabilizing, after experiencing some initial startup challenges. The transportation department is using ridership numbers to determine whether any routes need to be consolidated or even eliminated.

Other quick updates:

  • Parental responsibility zones will be a topic of discussion for the board retreat
  • The school district and individual school websites will be updated soon. The new look and feel will be consistent throughout and is being tested right now.
  • In Nutrition, meals at schools are very well received. Some challenges exist with the software to run the registers, but the vendor is fully engaged and this is expected to be resolved soon.
  • Powerschool is expected to be up for parent access by September 8.
  • Payroll is doing very well, with minimal issues reported.
  • 600 laptops were provided to the teachers, who were very pleased to have their obsolete equipment replaced.
  • Starting in September, each school board business meeting will celebrate a school in the district.

Finally, in the chairman’s report, Mr. Hansen touched upon the need to address some items at the upcoming board retreat. He also stressed the need to have board members be made available to address local civic events as invited. One great benefit of local control of the schools is local visibility and accessibility of school board and central office personnel. Mr Hansen has been on touch with various parents over the past couple of weeks, discussing how easily issues were getting resolved.