NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The McCann School Committee last week approved a new three-year Student Oppurtunity Act plan that focuses positive school environments, leveraging best practices for students with disabilities and supporting curriculum communication. 

 

Principal Justin Kratz said the vocational district had received about $170,000 in extra state funding toward implementing the goals. 

 

"As part of that infusion of money into the public schools, they required all public schools to submit a plan of how this extra money will impact and benefit students," he said. "They want to know sort of generally how are these funds improving education in your school, and they give you some certain areas to focus on."

 

The Student Opportunity Act was passed in 2019 and school are required to submit plans every three years, starting in 2020. 

 

Districts can provide their own goals or select from a dropdown list, which is what McCann is doing. The broader goals have to be backed up by data and the "evidence-based" program selected to address achievement gaps for lower-income and special needs students. 

 

"We talked about standards-based grading, and how we're implementing that and how some of the extra money we receive allows us to facilitate that," Kratz told the committee. "We talked about our advisory program, and how that's something we're going to continue to roll out and refine and work on as being connected to our positive school environment. Supporting curriculum and implementation deals with the standards-based grading continuing our MCAS test prep program programs, our mediation programs, we're finding those tie into the high-leverage practices for students with disabilities."

 

A lot of the funding will go toward salaries and professional development to enhance instruction and engagement. 

 

The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education also provided a heat map that breaks down the student population to identify the largest disparities in comparison to statewide data. 

 

Kratz said the school's data tells a story that's interesting but also with some nuance. For instance, all McCann's students are enrolled in a career pathway so it's not something that can be improved upon. 

 

What did stand out is chronic absenteeism — the percentage of students missing 10 percent of the school year, or 18 days. 

 

"Our number relative to the surroundings in Berkshire County, let's put it that way, is better than a lot," he said. "But it still needs some work — 26 percent of our students being chronically absent is too high."

 

One way to reduce students, perhaps, getting discouraged with low grades and frustrated with school is to work with the advisory group and standards-based grading to address these issues before they become critical. 

 

But digging into the numbers also revealed they were a bit misleading. Of those chronically absent, 31 percent were considered low-income and low-income students make up 43 percent of the population. There aren't 50 or 60 kids absent, but rather about a dozen. 

 

Kratz also noted that the state doesn't recognize "excused absences" so any absences are counted. The school's doing a "deep dive" to look at absences on a case-by-case basis and try to address the students individually.

 

"For our low-income student rate of out-of-school suspension to match the district rate, we would need three less low-income students to be suspended," he said. "So again, I'm not trying to say these three students don't matter. I just don't want the School Committee to be alarmed by these discrepancies and think there's like a boatload of students out there that are causing these numbers to shift."

 

Another data point that caught his eye was that only 67 percent of ninth-graders had passed all their classes. 

 

"That's a really, really high number," the principal said, but it turned out it was the class of 2022, when some pandemic restrictions were still in place and a larger number of students missed their exploratory rotation. Those testing positive for COVID-19 had a five-day isolation period but exploratories are two to three days. 

 

"What happened was nobody failed a course that year, not single freshmen failed a course that year," Kratz said. "The DESE computer system doesn't allow us to enter in like, 'they didn't do it,' you have to enter zero. So zero for a two-day class of exploratory is entered as a failing course."

 

He said the school was very confident in its ability to advance students on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System testing and that it would also be developing a survey to get feedback from stakeholders. 

 

"We felt based on the data that we just reviewed, creating a more positive school environment or working to increase our positive school environment would be a good way to sort of address the data discrepancies that we found," Kratz said, adding that work of the advisory groups will aid in that. 

 

"The kids are still sort of feeling out this whole advisory group, but they're talking more, they're engaged more. You hear a lot of conversation in the building around it. So it's becoming ingrained."

 

The committee approved the plan and declared an old spot welder that's been replaced as surplus.