Weatherly concentrates on improving test scores

Weatherly Area high school and elementary/middle school principals Anthony DeSpirito and Sandra Slavick, spoke to the board Wednesday night about students’ performance.

“We are ranked 270 out of 500 districts in the state. We are on the rise,” said DeSpirito.

Slavick said the elementary school is still above state average.

“We seem to be doing wonderful in science in fourth grade but fifth grade math is a problem,” she said.

The principal said fifth grade had subs for four months last year.

“Having different people in there didn’t help, because we have only one teacher for every grade level it doesn’t help and it shows in the results,” she said.

“We are finally getting our curriculum on board. We are rewriting it and getting it up to snuff. The middle school is above our peers, but we have not gone up in common core,” she said.

Slavick said the school has taken steps to help lift the students’ scores.

“We started a tutoring program and pulling students failing in language arts. We are adjusting the curriculum for that. We are working on coming up with solutions.”

“In the charts everyone has gone down since switching to common core but we are above our peers.”

“I only care about what’s going on with our kids here in this district,” board member Girard Fewins said.

Using last year’s Keystone Proficiency scores, DeSpirito illustrated the high school’s standing.

“Our ELA score is up to 78 percent. We are going in the right direction. It’s the work of all the teachers. We are going up while our peers are going down. The curriculum is going in the right direction,” he said.

“We have room to go. Science is the only area other districts are doing better in,” he said.

“We have a 75 percent in English and math in the high school but only a 62 in science. If we can get those science scores up the 270 ranking will be a lot higher. We will talk about science at the next curriculum meeting,” he said.

The curriculum meeting will take place at 5 p.m. Nov. 14, in the middle school LGI room.

Board member Matthew vonFrisch said, “We started these meetings last year but the time is now.

“We are seeing some charts and there is room for improvements. The problem is overlapping curriculum.”

“They are redoing math for K through 12 grade, looking at more CCTI options and adding online course availability,” he said.

The curriculum meeting is open to the public and parents are encouraged to attend.