The district report card was a large focus at Marysville’s School Board meeting Thursday night.
Being the first year districts were given an overall grade, board members expressed joy in Marysville earning a “B” rating. According to the Ohio Department of Education, “approximately 40 percent of schools received a ‘B’ or higher.”
“We’re very proud of our trajectory and where we’re heading as a school district,” Assistant Superintendent Jonathan Langhals said in his presentation about the report card results. “As we all know that, we always want to continue to improve, so we have some opportunities for growth we want to emphasize.”
Marysville School District earned “A” grades in progress and gap closing, while earning “B” grades in improving at-risk K-3 readers and graduations rates. However, the district earned a “C” in achievement and a “D” in prepared for success.
Langhals said officials are “very intrigued” about next year’s report card data, as that will feature the first graduating class from the Early College High School.
Board members expressed concern about various facets of the report card. Board member Sue Devine pointed out the report card criteria has been shifting to where community members could “kind of lose interest after a while” because they’d lose track of the changes.
Council member Brian Luke praised the districts improved grades, but questioned if parents would understand what the grades mean to them.
“Gap closing is jargon, and you had someone call you, a parent, who was excited about the report card, but do parents know what gap closing is?” Luke asked. “Gap closing is very important to educators, but is the community, are they motivated or understand the goal?”
“My sense would be no,” Superintendent Diane Mankins said. “We do try to educate quite a bit, but no one was upset when we had an ‘F,’ I guess is my point. That doesn’t change our target and our enthusiasm to communicate that to them and understand, but it is a complicated measure to explain.”
Board member Nan Savidge said at a school board leadership conference, she heard positive reactions from outside school officials about Marysville’s grades.
Board member Dick Smith said it’s “important to acknowledge” that other states are seeking out information from Marysville officials to “move education in those states forward.”
Also at the meeting, board members saw presentations from educators and district officials about where progress is going in Marysville.
The first presentation was about how Northwood Elementary is personalizing education for its students.
Northwood Elementary Principal Karen Wells showed the board her staff had worked during the summer and other times to create custom learning experiences for their students, ranging from walking exercises to educational games. She said it was a challenge to the staff to “be the teacher you needed when you were younger.”
“Teachers are seeing that pride kids are taking in the growth that they’re making,” Wells said. “Every grade has created something.”
She said with the newly implemented programs, students can choose their learning opportunities and pace themselves accordingly.
Superintendent Diane Mankins commented by saying teachers are putting in more time and work into this, but “in the end, they know the reason for it, and the payoff is worth it.”
The next presentation was from administrative office official Christopher Campbell, showing the board staff the future of interactive learning.
Campbell equipped board members with virtual reality headsets, iPods and cubes and guided them through a virtual tour of Mount Everest and the solar system using Google Expeditions. As someone who has helped incorporate blended learning into the district, Campbell said this could be an interactive learning experience for students that would go beyond them simply using their Chromebooks.
He said when he was hired into the district, he talked about how augmented and virtual reality are “the future of education.”
“When Diane asked me last year to look into the drones, I used that as an opportunity to ask about getting virtual reality into the district,” Campbell said. “I think it’s really the way we look at education and getting kids more hands-on experiences, and getting them experiences they wouldn’t normally see.”
He said when Google Expeditions is released for public modification, he plans to make virtual tours of the high schools in Marysville for students to partake in.
Finally, there was a presentation by teacher Ashley Thompson and instructional coach Heather MacLaughlin about how the district is working to personalize learning for all students.
Thompson said the district is in the middle phase of a large plan that involves creating a comfortable and accommodating atmosphere for students to learn in, ranging from having the teacher know their interests more to how students pace themselves in lessons.
“Things are improving and looking good, and we’re proud of the growth the district is making,” Thompson said. “Are we there yet? Not yet. We still have a little bit of growth to make, and we want to make sure we’re looking at that measure in tandem with other measures we feel are important.”
MacLaughlin said she and Thompson assembled a team of district officials to create guidelines and systems to “unify the exposure.”
“A heavy focus of our team this year will be the idea of mastery and helping teachers understand what that looks like so they can turn around and create structures and systems in their classroom for kids to live within that,” MacLaughlin said.
The next meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Oct. 18 at Mill Valley Elementary School.