ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The USD 480 school board continued to hear High Reliability Schools (HRS updates) at its most recent meeting Monday evening, this time from Bright Start Early Learning Center (BSELC).
BSELC Principal Jamie Downs led the discussion with some overall numbers about the building.
“As all the other buildings are, we're focusing on the first two levels for this year, which are Safe, Supportive and Collaborative Culture and Effective Teaching in Every Classroom. Parents, staff and administration took the survey for our building, but the students did not participate. We wanted to review how safe, supportive and collaborative our building is, and that was done during the fall conferences, and we've since used that data to come up with our action plan,” Downs said. “Bright Start Early Learning Center has 12 classrooms this year, and we have multiple teachers with multiple years of experience – one example is Jodie King has been with the district for 11 years, which includes time at Washington Elementary School, and Jodie Wilson is new to USD 480 but does have 14 years of teaching experience. We have four Special Education teachers and multiple other related service providers such as speech language pathologists, psychologists and occupational therapists, among others. Other Certified Staff include our instructional coaches, social worker and our nurse. We also quite a large Classified Staff, including a paraeducator in every classroom (one of whom is bilingual), 13 Special Education paraeducators (with one open position), and we've had some other movement throughout the building so far this year. We also have one staff member in the apprenticeship program working toward her degree, and she's VERY knowledgeable when it comes to early childhood education, having spent 20-plus years in education. We also have a library para and we were fortunate to get a full-time building sub this year, who has been a huge help. We also have three full-time speech paras, one of whom is doing practicum work to earn her licensure, and this year, we also have two paraeducators who are learning sign language and becoming certified in that, and they will be extremely beneficial in the future given the students we'll be getting in the school who have hearing loss issues. With the office staff, we have two secretaries and a parent coordinator. All of that is to help explain who all works with these kiddos.”
And there are certainly many students at BSELC, Downs said.
“We have 275 students currently enrolled at Bright Start Early Learning Center, and there are 22 students we know we'll be enrolling before the end of the year, and the majority of them will be coming to us from Russell Child Development Center,” Downs said. “There are also multiple screenings we're doing. The morning always has heavier enrollment – we currently have 154 in the morning session and the other 118 are in the afternoon session. Since probably around November, many new enrollees have gone in the afternoon session, and we'll continue with that. Our ELL population is at 178, which is a big majority of our students. We currently have 96 students on IEPs, with 25 more in progress. We also currently have eight students in wheelchairs, and that is the highest number we can recollect even throughout the district – and technically, six of those students are in a medical stroller and not actual full-on wheelchairs. The survey with our building was a little different – all of the administrators responded, we had 33 teacher/staff responses, and then 174 parent responses, With our areas of strength, one of them was 'Safe and Orderly,' and teachers and parents scored that pretty highly – 3.5 or higher is really good, and anything lower than 3,5 is something that needs to be addressed. Our PLCs were also ranked pretty consistently strong, and I have to give credit to Veronica Nevarez for that because she's done an amazing job getting us where we need to be and sharing data and keeping things on track. Teachers and staff also indicated they feel they have the resources they need for instruction, which is important to me given all the different needs throughout the building.”
While there is a lot to be proud of from the gathered data, Downs said, there are some areas that can be improved upon.
“With our areas for growth/improvement, the two areas that saw low scores were teachers having formal ways to provide input regarding the optimal function of the school and the success of the whole school,” Downs said. “The latter is the one I found particularly concerning because the teacher rating was 4.01, but when we drill down more specifically, especially with individual staff recognitions, that was our absolute lowest score. Dealing with the challenges we have throughout the day, I want our staff to feel like they're supported and appreciated because they have a hard job but show up every day to do it.”
BSELC Instructional Coach Veronica Nevarez then spoke to the board about other information gleaned from the data.
“We're also aiming to strengthen our parent engagement by creating meaningful and accessible opportunities for everyone to share their ideas and influence how the school operates. We're aiming to increase that half a point, and part of our action plan includes a hub that houses many of our common documents,” Nevarez said. “In addition to that, we added a tab where we're documenting our PLC meetings, our outlines for the PLC presentations, and we'll soon start sending out the minutes of those meetings afterwards. That is our general hub that houses a lot of basic information about conferences, district resources and other similar information. As we come to data points, that's where we've created summaries that are accessible, and that's available to staff and administrators in a one-stop location.”
To conclude the presentation, BSELC Social Worker Debi Flores then talked about ways to hel improve staff recognition efforts.
“Like Jamie said earlier, one of our other goals is for Bright Start Early Learning Center leadership help staff feel more recognized and celebrate their accomplishments,” Flores said. “Our goal is to raise that score from 4.01 to 4.35, and we want to do that by creating consistent ways to help recognize individual and building successes. That part of our action plan includes showing appreciation through notes and cards in the staff members' mailboxes, e-mail shoutouts, verbal acknowledgements throughout the day, shoutouts during staff meetings and other similar gatherings. We also want to recognize that everyday professionalism such as consistent attendance, punctuality, hard work/effort, positive classroom practices and personal milestones. We want to make sure we sincerely acknowledge the work our staff members are doing, because they truly are valued by us administrators and by the families, and the deserve to feel that.”
In the meeting’s new business, the board approved a bid from Southwest Glass in the amount of $13,300 to furnish and install a metal roofing system over the existing slope glaze entryways at entrances 1 and 15 at Liberal High School and a five-year Planned Service Agreement with JCI beginning Dec. 1, 2025. The board also approved a quote from Convergint in the amount of $24,635.82 to refill the district’s spare stock of access control equipment and early graduation applications from Samir Herrera Peralta and Edwyn Rios.
