Superintendent Dr. Grant Eloi informed Board members at the Feb. 8 committee meeting about a new initiative the district will have this year where at almost every board meeting, members are going to hear from one of the school principals with a spotlight time for them to let the board know of the amazing things they have going on on their campus.
“We have all been working very hard the past few years and it’s good to see that work come before us,” said Eloi.
The first principal was Armetrice Williams from Weaver Elementary. She’s been principal for two years now, but she’s been at the school for a total of four years.
“I am loving it,” she shared with the board.
Williams, who is a big data person, said she’s always looking at ways to improve things at the school. They perform a checkpoint called “STAR” to look at academics every nine weeks, which gives the administration an indication of where students are. When students took the STAR last year, which usually shows how well they will do on the annual LEAP test. Among third graders there were 45 students that performed at the mastery and advanced levels in ELA, 48 in Math, 31 in Science, and 6 for Social Studies. Williams said these numbers show that third grade is growing. Administrators examined Social Studies and implemented some things to help bring up those scores.
Fourth grade had 28 students testing at mastery and advanced levels for ELA, 24 for Math, 5 for Science and 4 for Social Studies.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our scores and where we are,” said Williams. Mastery and advanced scores is what drives Weaver’s School Performance Score…and I couldn’t go over these great scores without recognizing the teachers that are responsible for them.”
Forty-four percent of Heather Burrell’s students scored mastery or advanced on the third grade STAR in ELA. About 30 percent of Esther Hoover’s students scored mastery or advanced on the third grade Math STAR. Twenty-nine percent of Caelon Powells’ students scored mastery or advanced on the fourth grade STAR. Kelci Latchie had 26 percent of her students score mastery or advanced in Science.
Each student that scored mastery or advanced received a star mask and were able to participate in a celebration.
The next thing students were recognized for was growth.
“While we are looking for mastery and advanced, growth is still very very important…so my objective is also to recognize those kids that are growing because that is important as well,” said Williams.
In third grade alone 232 students showed growth so they received a treat as well. There were 187 fourth grade students that showed growth on their STAR test.
Every afternoon there is also a student that delivers announcements over the intercom.
With PBIS the school does a weekly drawing. Each homeroom teacher has a behavior tracking chart. Students have to have four or less marks on their conduct sheet to be entered into the drawing and 19 prizes with certificates are given away each week, one for each homeroom. Each week a different homeroom gets to design “Flyer Bucks,” which are given out as prizes. Once a student receives 50, they get to order lunch out from a local restaurant.
Ongoing construction at the school is addressing some safety concerns. A door was installed just inside the main entrance to the school so that anyone visiting must be buzzed in in order to gain entrance to the building. There’s also new playground equipment, which the kids are excited about. There are also brand new restrooms. There’s also a beautiful new fence and a new lawn service cleaned off the old fence and old playground equipment.
“The kids love seeing the transformation,” Williams added.
