Um and lastly, as Mike mentioned, we're going to expand the work of our PLC's. We started looking at a structure that we really felt good about this year. Um and within that structure, we found uh a lot of growth in those conversations about instructional strategies. And that's that work that we want to use to have data guide our conversations and really talk about those impactful instructional strategies similar to the ones that they're using at um HD Storm School, the high yield and instructional strategies. Um we think that that's going to be a focus for next year for our PLC's. Um, and our goal is to just continue to support each other and continue these conversations not only within our school but between schools to really say, "Hey, what's working between our schools and how can we learn from each other to continue to grow?" Okay.
And then within Panorama, the sense of belonging that you keep hearing about. Um, there's two main areas. One is skill areas. So that is uh self-regulation, perseverance, those pieces. And we had growth in all of those specific skill areas, which is very encouraging. When you look at the sense of belonging areas, this is where someone else referenced that there's four different scores that combine together to make the sense of belonging overall number. Uh and so in each of those subcores, which are do you have supportive relationships? Um do people at school know you? Uh we had growth in all of those. the one that we um went down in is students respecting each other which went down and and washed out all the growth that we made in those other areas. So SLT looking at that then next steps there are some more diagnostic data.
So a panorama in this format is helpful in getting that really big view of what's going on but not so much um diagnostic like which are the specific areas where we're having those struggles and then based on that data what are next steps to help our students to feel more respected um with each other and some of that might look like conflict resolution training but it could also take many different forms um and then um yeah that would be a main area that we're looking at at with Panorama as well and that is [Applause] Going last is great because you've exhausted all your questions. Sneak away while you can. Seeing that there are none, thank you. Have a good Um, so hi everybody. I'm Adam Lester. Um, I am filling in tonight for Tara Pitekch, who's currently on maternity leave, and then Kelly Bennett, who's our instructional coach and our SLT member.
Um, I'm the associate principal of operations and athletics currently. Um, and here to update you on our school improvement goals. Um, so we did kind of an overview. If you know anything about RMS, this was our year of new. We had 17 new staff members in our building this year. um with the amount of retirements we had last year. And one of our successes this year, they're all coming back next year. Um so, not as much turnover as as we had last year. Um some of our other successes is our improvement in buildingwide math proficiency. Um I'm going to talk about it in just a second, but we are at something like 77% of our students are building wide proficient in math. Um which is the highest it's been in the last few years. um as we talk about panorama and that sense of belonging, we saw a less than 10% disparity between subgroups versus um the buildingwide data.
And then for our champs walkthroughs, we hit all of our targets and had a decrease in classroom disruptions from an office discipline referral perspective. Um even though we didn't quite reach that goal, um some of our opportunities, I I know you've heard a lot about Champs tonight. I heard another elementary principal talk about the fact that when you have one set of expectations in one classroom and a different set of expectations in a different classroom, it can be really challenging except it's seven times during our day. Um so that's been this is our first full year of implementing Champs in our building. Um we started it after winter break last school year. So this was our first full year of that. Um and this will also be coming up the first full year that we've had an entire building of students who've had experience with CHAMPS as well.
Um reading goal was not achieved this year. That's a definite gap for us and it's something we're going to work on as we move forward. Um we have a new math curriculum roll out that's coming in 2526. So we're hoping to improve the you know already strong math scores even more. Um and then we are going to do a continued review and revision of our bulldog block structure um for consistency. That's our intervention time during the day that every grade level gets. So our two school improvement goals, one was about equitable learning environments, which is our champs and our panorama and our um office discipline referrals and then our increase in student learning through impactful tier one strategies. Our academic goals for the year was the 2425 goal was 70% of their of our students meet their growth targets on MAP. So you'll see that for math that was 65.34% which is higher than it's been in the past but about um I'm sorry higher than it's been in the past.
And then also from the fall to the spring our proficiency buildingwide went up too. So we started at 73% proficient in the fall um and got up to 70 7% in the spring. Reading is the place that we know we need some work. Um 50% of our students met their growth targets and our proficiency actually went down a little bit from the fall to the spring. that is in line with what it's been the last couple years, but also something we know has to be a continued focus for our building. Um, I know you heard a lot about the comprehensive literacy plan. That's going to be a part of our our work as well. Champs walkthrough. So, again, this is the piece of of our building where we're trying to systematize and be consistent in what does it mean to, you know, what's your conversation level?
What how do I ask for help in a classroom? And we hit all of our champs targets. Um, the positive corrective ratio goal of 3 to1. We hit the opportunities respond um average disruptions and then ontask behavior. All things for our first year of implementation we're really proud of. Now for example if you look at the opportunities respond the average was 12.76. The goal is 10 to 40. So did we hit it? Sure. Is there a lot of opportunity to get better at that also? Sure. Um and it's actually going to lead into more of our work for next year. One of our other goals and metrics for that uh classroom environment piece was we wanted to see a decrease in our office referrals for disruption. So somebody mentioned before about you know it got to the point where it gets to be an office issue.
In 23 24 we had 82 office referrals for disrupting the classroom where it got to the point where it had to escalate to the office. We were shooting for a 25% decrease. We got a 21% decrease. Um so down to 65. So again good growth but not quite all the way there to the to the goal that we were shooting for. Um, Panorama, our one of our other focuses was sense of belonging. So, you'll see kind of that fall, winter, spring that everybody else has seen. And when we first saw that 70%, 68% are like, "Oh, that's a little concerning, especially when you're seeing elementary schools with 80% or whatever it is." So, what we looked at is we looked at how do we compare to other middle schools um across the country because this is something lots of different people take. So that 68% sense of belonging for our building puts us in the 99th percentile for middle schools that take Panorama.
Um, one of the things that we did with this that's going to lead into some of the work that we do next year is in the winter we brought this information to our principal advisory group, which is our group of eighth graders who kind of like give us a temperature of what's happening in the building. They're the kids who come on our sixth grade welcome day to give tours um to those incoming sixth graders and ask them like how can we help with the sense of belonging? how can we help make kids feel safe, feel good here at school? Um, so that's some of the work that is going to continue into the fall with our SLT. Um, and then this is kind of an update of some of that future work that we talked about. So quarterly champs walkthroughs have been happening and one of the pieces that we know we're going to look for in the coming school year is how can our champs look for is contribute to academic success.
So one of the ways I've been explaining that to people is an opportunity to respond is something like, hey, can you pick up a pencil? That's an opportunity to respond during champs. I don't know that picking up a pencil is a super academically rigorous thing to do. We're going to see how can we find more of those opportunities to respond that are academic, you know, leading to academic growth. Um, guided bulldog block. So, bulldog block is our time during the school year or I'm sorry, during the school day when kids get enrichment, intervention, um, and structured environment. This was the first year that it's been building wide structured. It hasn't it hadn't been previously. So that's a piece that our SLT and RTS or team leaders will continue to review to make sure that we are following that structure and then adjusting that structure as necessary.
Um as we did day-to-days we looked at data for you know map as the as the school year went and one of the takeaways from that was more focus on common vocabulary andformational text. We predict that that might be a place where we can improve some of those MAP scores. And then instructional rounds is another piece that kind of shifted as the year went. Um, somebody else earlier mentioned that it used to be done by consultants and now our instructional coach is kind of owning that and leading that. And one thing she did the second half of the school year was paired content teachers with other content teachers. So, sixth grade math saw seventh or eighth grade math. Sixth grade social studies saw seventh or eighth grade social studies and led to really rich conversations about tier one instruction and strategies that have shown to be effective in those classes.
Um so that is a piece that we continue as well or we anticipate continuing as well questions. [Applause] So for the classroom disruptions that's tracked in powers school. Yes. So go ahead. So like if I have a student that's maybe disrespectful and they cause a disruption in class, do they check both? So the champs walkthroughs happen during the time when like I forget who said it before, sorry. The the panel of five teachers come through and kind of see what happens. So a classroom disruption for champs might be something that just kind of interrupts the flow of discuss or of instruction. So it might be, you know, somebody blurting something out and the teacher turns and said, "Hey, can you, you know, not blurt out right now?" That would be a disruption from a champ's walkthrough perspective. But the office discipline referrals are the classroom disruptions that get to the point that it has to escalate to the dean, to an administrator be, you know, kind of beyond that.
Understand that. What I'm saying is if I have to give a referral for a student who maybe is being rude and disrupting the class. Yes. In power school, do I go in there and say I I don't know if being in one? I don't know. But let's put rude and then rude and disrupting class or do you have to pick one or the other? It it would put it would be tagged as a as a classroom disruption and there might be like some narrative notes in there to the dean to the administrator to like hey here's what happened and it would be a part of our follow-up conversation. But the really the only way it would like hit the champ's data and the office discipline data is if it happened during a champ's walkthrough. So if I said so if I don't have a walkth through in there and say sorry Rob disruptive in class and I just give a referral for Rob for being disruptive that doesn't show on here.
It does. That would be the office discipline referral. Yes. So that was that. So that's why I'm asking like can you have can I check well Rob's being rude and disruptive in power school or is it one or the other? Yeah, it's it's it's that's one of the like subsets students being sent down for is how it's ultimately I guess. Okay. I guess my question is just like how if there being both I mean what's we just take them I guess the the worst one. Yeah. The teacher makes a call. Yeah. Then I guess it's like we're really capturing it because if they he's also being disruptive, you know, but I I understand it, but I don't know. I don't know if the way is power scoping. You do multiple and then filter out or it's it's just the one and and it's I teacher discretion, I guess, like how they choose to code it as this, you know, this kid was being so rude that they disrupted instruction to the point where I couldn't teach, then that would, you know, be an office referral.
And then you said the bulldog bulldog block was not structured. So it was kind of like team structured. So one seventh grade team might run bulldog block one way and another seventh grade team might run a different way. This is the first year that our SLT decided Tuesdays is going to be diagnostic. Wednesdays is going to be independent reading. Thursday is going to be skills for reading or math. And then you know Monday might be something like independent reading. We drop everything and read for 20 minutes. Fridays could be fun Fridays depending on if you have all your work in that has is not building wide now as opposed to like teams doing it how they've done it. So does so seven so sixth, seventh and eighth grade follow that same structure or just sixth grade follow No, sixth grade, seventh grade and eighth grade.
You mentioned that you're you've talked to students to get student feedback and you said they're the students that lead tours or what? So the principal advisory group that's a group of eighth grade students. So part of what they do, that's kind of like their first part of the principal advisory group is to be the ones on that sixth grade welcome day that we have in August to lead tours of our incoming sixth graders who who come over those days. Um but then during the school year we'll ask, you know, bring them down to talk about, hey, what's going well, what's not going well? What ideas do you have for making the school better? That probably happens once a month. Um but that was one of our once a month meetings with them was looking at that panoram panorama data. Any other questions? Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank [Applause] you. Hi everyone. Um I'm Joanne Smith. I'm the principal of Aavia High School. So, um, I just wanted to do a quick shout out of all the people who are on our school leadership team. Um, we have a big team and they're representative of different curricular areas or administration. Um, one interesting little fact is about half of these people were new to SLT this year. So, we had a lot of learning as a team together this year. Um, we talked a lot about some of the things you already heard tonight. Um, obviously school improvement goals, but also we looked at instructional rounds. Um we did instructional rounds with our school leadership team and then eventually expanded that beyond the school leadership team with our coaches. Um we talked a lot about how to look at data in a way that isn't um that's as least biased as possible and we're including that student voice which I'll talk about in just a minute.
Um we use something called equity traps. If you remember from November I gave you guys a laminated card that we use when we look at data to try to avoid those equity traps. um some of those biases that we bring in that may be intentional or unintentional but we really tried hard to have our team members call each other out which worked out really well. So those cards were always at our table and you would hear teams when we were doing small group discussions around data they would say things like oh I think you're falling into this trap and they would point to the card and it kind of gave that third point reference. So it was a great tool for us. Um, and we also use a book called Street Data to help us with our protocols at looking at data. And this was very very helpful in um, looking at some pretty um, heady data and some pretty some data that we needed to really dig down into.
So in the fall, I showed you these two goals. One was around ACT and one was around extracurricular activities specifically for our lowincome students. So, as many of you may know or may not know, the state of Illinois changed from SAT to ACT this year. And so, this was really a stab in the dark. 60% we just kind of said, "Okay, this is where we were with SAT." Um, in the past in this kind of general area, so let's just kind of throw this out there. Um, and so that was kind of where where those numbers came from. It was really just kind of a stab in the dark because we didn't know we hadn't given the ACT to all of our students since 2017. And then the second goal is around um again extracurriculars and our students particularly focusing on removing barriers for our low-income students because there is a gap.