School improvement plans

Improved student attendance, fewer expulsions and suspensions, improved English language arts test scores, and heightened critical thinking and analytical writing skills are among the goals of two schools in the Shelton School District.

Each of the eight schools in the district annually produce improvement plans. On Nov. 12, the Shelton School Board heard the plans from Oakland Bay Junior High School and Olympic Middle School for the 2024-25 school year.

Oakland Bay Junior High School Principal Maryann Marshall presented the improvement plan for her school, which teaches students in grades seven and eight.

By June 2025, the junior high hopes to reduce the average number of student absences from 27 days in the 2023-24 school year to 15 days in 2024-25.

By June 2025, the school wants the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standard on the English Language Arts (ELA) Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) in seventh grade to improve from 31.25% in 2023-24 to 36.25% in 2024-25.

One of the strategies in the improvement plan states “Teachers will authentically engage students by greeting students by name as they enter class, knowing each student’s story, strengths and needs. Teachers will engage students the first 5-10 minutes of class with a ‘Do Now’ activity.”

“It’s important that we engage with our students, we know their stories, strengths and needs and we’re welcoming them into the school, into the classrooms every day,” Marshall told the board.

Another strategy is teachers providing “a clear intention and success criteria each period posted in the room to help students see the purpose and relevance of each lesson.” Teachers will also “design lessons that connect academic content to real-world applications that resonate with students’ personal experiences and future aspirations.”

All ELA teachers will use the “Just Right Book” strategy for supporting students’ choice of books and engagement in reading. All ELA teachers will teach students how to “build their reading stamina, engage in different genres and discuss text with (each) other.”

“This helps to support comprehension and critical thinking skills,” Marshall said.

Teachers will implement the Claim, Evidence and Reasoning framework as a core instructional strategy across all core content classrooms. This approach will focus on improving students’ critical thinking, analytical writing and reading comprehension skills.

Teachers will integrate explicit instruction on text features, including headings, subheadings, captions, diagrams, graphs, tables, glossaries, indexes, bold text to bullet points, into their daily lessons across all content areas. This approach will help students recognize and use text features to increase comprehension and critical thinking skills, leading to improved academic performance.

“I always really enjoy these presentations and all the pictures and again everyone with these improvement plans has had smart goals and that they’re measurable specific,” said school board member Lauren Gilmore. “I also like how your students are setting goals — it’s another key small skill early on that leads to big success later.”

“I like all the student engagement, especially at that age it’s so important to keep their attention and get them engaged in school and the whole environment,” said school board member Keri Davidson. “I like the student-led activities, the electives that help the students want to be there, the clubs and the sports and the things like that has really grown as far as student involvement at Oakland Bay Junior High School.”

Board President Matt Welander said he likes the plan’s goals. “I think they’re valuable and realistic,” he said.

Principal Mary Johnson presented the improvement plan for Olympic Middle School, which teaches students in grades five and six.

Johnson said she works closely with Marshall and Oakland Bay Junior High “to align our practices together. It’s really difficult to have students for two years, just get them going and then they move on, so we’re working really hard to make sure we’re providing similar expectations, so it’s not such a big shift for our students.”

The improvement plan at Olympic Middle School seeks to reduce by June 2025 the number of students who receive a state reportable suspension or expulsion from 39 in 2024 to 36 in 2025.

“We worked super hard on this last year, and so it might not seem like a lot to go from 39 to 36 reportable suspensions or expulsions in a year, that was huge for Olympic Middle School last year,” Johnson said.

By June 2025, the school hopes to increase the percentage of students meeting standard on the ELA SBA in the sixth grade from 31.3% in 2024 to 34% in 2025. The strategies include teachers conferring with students weekly using “our conferring protocol: research, compliment, teaching point, application, goal.” Another strategy is “all students receive 30 minutes of word work (phonological and decoding) instruction through Academy time.”

The school is also teaching students methods to prevent bullying, including recognizing they have much in common with each other.

“I like your collaboration with Oakland Bay Junior High for a smooth transition, complimenting kids while they’re reading is a great way of encouraging instead of criticizing, and pro-active on bullying,” said board member Becky Cronquist. “Kudos.”