ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The USD 480 school board got to hear of some good work going on at Liberal High School during its most recent meeting Monday evening.
Monday, the board heard from school representatives regarding its High Reliable Schools (HRS) data.
“Some of us attended an HRS summit in San Antonio a couple weeks ago, and it provided some really valuable insight into that bigger picture of HRS,” LHS Principal Darla Forney said. “I wasn’t here when this initiative was started, so that experience of going to the summit really helped me better understand how all the different pieces fit together. HRS is not a checklist of tasks to complete, it’s an attitude of operation that guides how we think, behave, and continuously strive to grow and improve. HRS has five levels, but at its core, it emphasizes the importance of both the teachers and students feeling safe and secure at school. It requires a collaborative environment where all stakeholders have a voice and commitment to excellent teaching every day in every classroom and the implementation of a viable, guaranteed curriculum. LHS is dedicated to a growth mindset where we intentionally look for strategies to increase the culture, teaching and education of our staff and students while including parents in that process. HRS surveys were previously administered to parents, students, teachers and administrators. By analyzing, discussing and ultimately creating concrete action steps, based on the data provided, we seek to demonstrate to our stakeholders how powerful their voices are when it comes to bettering our school and encourage more people in the community to participate in future surveys so we can continue to grow.”
LHS teachers Justin Kieran and Fernanda Peterson then shared the collected data with the board.
“We are currently at Level One of HRS, and Level One is really about creating a secure and safe environment as well as ensuring collaboration between teachers, and that really comes down to eight leading indicators,” Kieran said. “The first two of those indicators are about safety and security among stakeholders and how safe everyone feels. The next two of those are about teacher collaboration and how effective it is, and then the two after that are really focused on the degree to which stakeholders feel they’re able to give their input on how the school functions day-to-day. The last two are a little special, they’re about celebrating student success and using technology and other resources effectively. What we did was we pored through all the data – we had 104 responses from teachers and staff, 140 from parents, and 648 from students. Among all of that, we were looking for patterns and where was there consistently good and positive data as well as where there were consistent concerns. We saw consistently positive data in a few areas and consistently concerned data in a few others, particularly in regard to the degree to which parents, students and community members feel like they have input into the school. There were a couple areas I have to point out that, while the data was positive, the stakeholders most affected felt like they deserved a response as well.”
Peterson then talked about some areas where progress has been made.
“Parental feedback has been generally positive, especially in that first area in terms of perceiving the school environment as safe and orderly,” Peterson said. “When it came to teacher teams and collaborative groups, they regularly meet to address curriculum, assessments, instruction and the achievement of all students. While all these results are encouraging, administrators remain focused on maintaining and strengthening these and other areas through consistent expectations, particularly regarding attendance, hallway monitoring, and student accountability through Later at LHS. There are currently multiple efforts being devised at LHS to intentionally highlight more student successes, and our administration has placed a strong emphasis on recognizing student achievement. The activities office has been using social media to recognize student events and achievements, and there are multiple other incentives and other methods of highlighting the good work the students are doing every day. With each passing week, students, parents and teachers can see the hallways being progressively more filled with posters illustrating the accomplishments of the student body.”
With all the data collected, Kieran said there is still plenty of work to do.
“Even with the measures where we’re getting positive data, we’re not entirely satisfied with that,” Kieran continued. “We want to maintain those scores or even improve on them, but these are the areas where we really want to see improvement on, especially with the parents and community members expressing how they feel they don’t really get enough of a say in what goes on at the school. Or, maybe they feel they don’t get enough communication. One of the indicators is about the teachers feeling like they get a high level of say and while most responders overall responded they were satisfied, the teachers themselves didn’t express much satisfaction. The most direct communication we have with the parents meaningfully is through the parent-teacher conferences, which we feel could be much more intentional and provide more valuable information so the parents can get the information they need, which could inspire them to communicate more with us. What we did was we created four grade-level one-pagers for the homeroom mentors to guide them through conversations with parents. That includes the basics of grades and overall attendance and also goes into more specific aspects of that student’s work and what parents should expect with each year of high school, like state testing and ACT testing and things like that.”
There are also other ongoing efforts to continue improving parent outreach, Kieran said.
“There came a point when we realized there’s too much information to share just once a year, so we decided to create a parent guidebook,” Kieran said. “It’s much different than the student handbook, and the goal is to give the parents everything they’ll need for their students’ four years in one condensed medium, ranging from student testing to what goes on in homeroom to the different activities available for students. We’re also working on formalizing surveys and community input so that line of communication is always open for everyone.”
In the meeting’s new business, the board voted to approve a bid from Kansas Gym Floors for $19,925 for the annual gym floor refinishing at Eisenhower Middle School, Seymour Rogers Middle School, the LHS Big House and East Campus Gym and also voted to approve early graduation applications for Edgar Ramos Hernandez, Mauricio Guereca Ibanez, and Edgar Valverde. To conclude the meeting’s new business, the board also approved back pay for the districts SRO program in the amount of $186,776.44.
