Schools

Board Approves 'School in Need of Improvement' Plan for Lewis F. Cole

Principal Rosemary Giacomelli spelled out the plan in great detail at the Fort Lee Board of Education's regular business meeting Monday; walking tour dates and community forums for 2012 referendum also announced

The Fort Lee Board of Education Monday approved a “school in need of improvement (SINI) plan” for , after principal Rosemary Giacomelli detailed the plan before the board.

The SINI plan is a Department of Education requirement under the No Child Left Behind Act for schools that fail to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), explained Fort Lee’s Acting Superintendent Steven Engravalle.

“When your school is in the circumstance that Lewis F. Cole is that they’re showing repeated shortfalls in achievement for students in their building, they must come up with an improvement plan that must then be approved by the board,” Engravalle said. “Then we have to submit it to the Department of Education, who must then accept that plan, because they want to know what are you doing to get your students to meet AYP and to ultimately achieve.”

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Giacomelli was on hand at the school board’s regular business meeting Monday evening to detail the SINI plan, saying, “What we have done to satisfy the request for a unified plan are a tremendous amount of things that are going on.”

To begin with, Giacomelli said, the school sent letters to the parents of students who tested “partially proficient” informing them that they were eligible for outside tutoring.

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She said the school narrowed down the 57 tutoring venues the state recommends to about five, based on location—if parents wish to take their child there—and whether they could come to the school and use a classroom or go to students’ homes, the library or the community center for individual tutoring.

“We put together the five that we thought would be most convenient for parents,” Giacomelli said. “[Parents] have an opportunity to have outside tutoring to help their students grow and become more proficient in Language Arts. The letters will come back to me, and I’ll find out how many are going to each different venue, and we’ll set up a place and time for the students to have outside, private tutoring.”

Giacomelli reported that the school also established an online program that will begin in January and allow the roughly 70 students identified to participate to assess their needs and develop what’s called a “learning path.”

“It will run Monday to Thursday, an hour after school each day, with tutors from the school to oversee that the children are not going onto the program and not five minutes later clicking off,” she said, adding that the program can be accessed from home.

“Data that we have read and scientific data that we have seen shows that at least two hours a week on these programs has enhanced student learning by about 50 percent within six weeks,” Giacomelli said.

In addition, she said, “We’ve already done a program called ‘Measuring Up,’ where every student in the school has taken an online assessment.”

“We did this so that we could have immediate feedback; so that we could see where the students are deficient,” Giacomelli said, adding that the only things the program doesn’t grade are open-ended questions and expository writing—both of which will be evaluated by Language Arts teachers at the school after the Thanksgiving holiday using the New Jersey Registered Holistic Scoring Rubric.

“What we think our biggest problem is seems to be analyzing texts,” Giacomelli said.

In February, the school will have two days of New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK) “authentic testing,” according to the SINI plan.

“It won’t be the actual test, but it will have all the same boundaries,” Giacomelli said. “It will have the same amount of time, the same amount of questions, open-ended writing, so that the kids have an authentic chance of taking the same test that they will take [in April]—kind of like the high school kids when they take the PSAT, and then they take the SAT.”

She said the aim is that by the end of April when students take the actual test “the anxiety level will be down, and they will be more comfortable.”

“They will be more familiar with the types of questions that will be asked of them and the kind of writing that will be expected of them,” Giacomelli said.

The school is also in the process of planning an evening for parents to learn about Compass Learning, the program the school is using for online tutoring, and how their children can access it on their computers at home.

“If they don’t have computers at home, there are other places they can go—they can stay after school and use the computers in the library or go to the public library to access the program as well,” Giacomelli said.

She noted that while the middle school remained below AYP, “there was significant growth—just not enough to make the 87 percent that the state wanted.”

“We are very optimistic that we’re going to have a really good outcome, and everyone on staff is diligently working to make that happen,” she said, adding that while just 14 students did not pass the test two years in a row, there was an average increase of 20 points or more in the children’s scores, and that of the 14 in question, 85 percent were special needs students.

“So they showed significant growth, but they still didn’t make the passing mark,” Giacomelli said, noting that while the focus of the plan would be on Language Arts, Compass Learning would be used for anyone who failed to achieve proficient marks in Math as well.

Other business

Engravalle also provided a “referendum 2012 community engagement update” at Monday’s meeting, saying the school board has scheduled walking tours, which are open to the public, of Fort Lee schools.

The dates of the tours, which meet at the at 255 Whiteman St., according to Engravalle, are as follows:

  • Wed., Nov. 30, at 11 a.m.
  • Wed., Dec. 7, at 7 p.m.
  • Wed., Dec. 14, at 11 a.m.
  • Wed., Jan. 4, at 11 a.m.
  • Wed., Jan. 18, at 7 p.m.

“We tried to be as accommodating as possible, offering both late-morning and evening tours,” Engravalle said.

He said there will also be three scheduled “community forum meetings” at the . Those public meetings are scheduled as follows:

  • Mon., Dec. 12, at 7 p.m.
  • Tues., Jan. 3, 2012, at 7 p.m.
  • Tues., Jan 17, 2012, at 7 p.m.


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