Winters Joint Unified School District administrators presented their individual site’s School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) before the board during the Nov. 3 Board of Trustees meeting.
Principal Dawn Delorefice told Trustees that Winters Middle School’s SPSA has three goals which “closely aligned with the LCAP (Local Control and Accountability Plan) goals.”
The first goal Delorefice presented was to ensure “all students will demonstrate the skills, literacies, and understandings necessary for college and career readiness” by continuing and improving staff efforts to educate and provide support for their students. WMS’s second goal stated, “all students will have access to meaningful, appropriate, broad and relevant learning experiences.” Delorefice concluded with the third goal of having “all students…have access to a safe and welcoming environment, as supported by staff who maintain consistent positively-framed school wide expectations.”
“With regards to our first goal,” Delorefice said, explaining strategies for implementing each goal “of college and career readiness, we will focus on creating a schedule that is created through an equity lens and allows students to receive targeted instruction,” including through subject interventions, ELD classes and curriculum, Wheel Classes that offer college and career readiness to students, and encouraging the use of other organizations like the National Junior Honor Society and Educational Testing Service.
For the second goal of fostering learning conditions that promote success, WMS plans to use a number of means of measuring, including “implement a four-year PGC (Professional Growth Cycle) utilizing the Danielson Framework and Learning Focused Conversations” as well as Professional Learning Communities, and teacher rubrics and professional development conferences, with the goal of improving teachers engagement with student and easing the transition from elementary school to middle school.
To achieve the third goal of creating a safe and welcoming environment at WMS, Delorefice said the school plans to implement a number of measures to address this. She included the school’s work with the county to institute school-wide Culturally Responsive Positive Behavior Interventions and Support activities, the creation of and collaboration with relevant engagement committees, increasing available mental health support, parental and community partnerships, and a new campus monitor who started working that week.
The presentation laid out the Annual Measurable Outcomes section, describing past and existing statistics related to each goal as well as a corresponding, “expected outcome” that the school will hope to achieve by the end of this school year.
The first section of outcomes described the academic achievement of the proceeding school year, including nearly 25 percent of English Learning students being reclassified, a number the school hopes to increase by 10 percent, as well as a plan to improve i-Ready student performance by increasing the number of students in the “met or exceeded standards” category by 10 percent and decrease the number of students in the “below standards” category by 10 percent in both Reading and Math.
Delorefice continued that WMS will be expanding its advisory lessons for students with college and career focuses, including the addition of two career lessons and a backpack clearout once per trimester, as well as hosting a new Lunch and Learn program once per month. The school’s AVID goals include encouraging the use of student planners and decreasing suspension and misconduct rates by three percent and 10 percent respectively.
Regarding student’s mental health, WMS hopes to increase the percentage of students who report being able to talk about mental health in their school surveys by 10 percent, increase staff reports of student motivations to complete work by 10 percent, and to decrease the percentage of parents reporting being worried about their student’s wellbeing by 10 percent.
