The Liberty County Board of Education is set to evaluate Superintendent Dr. Perry at the Feb. 26 work session. The board also approved out of state travel requests, and received updates on the system’s charter accountability, as well as the results of a conducted student survey at Liberty County High School and Bradwell Institute during a regular meeting Jan. 22.
The materials and documents will be available in the board’s executive session room on Feb. 12, allowing those members to schedule a time to review the necessary procedure and documents. Members must have their evaluation completed by Feb. 21 for the Feb. 26 meeting, to ensure enough time to review and compile the results, Chairwoman Lily Baker said.
Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Susan Avant provided an update on the system’s charter contract. Due to changes in the College and Career Ready Performance Index calculations, the charter system contracts will include revised accountability goals and related performance measures, Avant said.
Because Liberty County School System is a charter system, they have a “raw flexibility”, but there are additional accountability measures in order to maintain the flexibility, Avant said. The changes are active as of January 2019.
There are four goals that a charter system must meet, Avant continued. Goal one requires that charter system schools achieve one of five measures: Content Mastery, Progress, Beating the Odds, Value-added Impact Score, and Overall CCRPI. The measure must increase by 10 percent of the gap where LCSS is at and 100 percent.
“For example, with our CCRPI, if we were currently a 75, then a difference between that 75 and 100 is 25 percent,” Avant explained. “So you take 10 percent of that number, which would be 2.5, and our goal would be 77.5.”
The Value-added Impact Score is specifically for charter schools, so LCSS is not receiving the score, Avant added. It may at some point come, but right now, it is not a factor.
Goal two is that charter system schools achieve a school climate star rating of four or five stars, Avant said. All of LCSS’s schools are currently at a four or five star rating, meaning the goal is currently at 100 percent.
Goal three states that the charter system will operate in a fiscally sound manner by not being designated a financial high-risk system as determined by the Department of Audits and Accounts and Georgia’s Department of Education, Avant continued.
Lastly, goal four is that the charter system schools will foster individual school level governance with: annual governance training, a minimum of six meetings per year, possess a variety of stakeholders and documents decisions, she said.
“We have our governance teams at every school and they’re very active,” Avant said. “Our contract says that LCSS will have a minimum of 10 meetings a year. We are in very good shape with our accountability updates.”
Chief Academic Officer Patti Crane presented the results of the first student survey conducted at the high schools. In December 2018, students at both Bradwell and Liberty County High were given an opportunity to complete a classroom school climate survey. The survey contained five questions developed by the staff, Crane said. Each student had the opportunity to complete one survey on each of their teachers, and could provide comments.
Over 1,500 Bradwell students and 900 LCHS students completed the survey, Crane said. In each of the five questions, the majority of the students either agreed or strongly agreed.
“Our main goal is relationships,” Crane said. “It’s very important that we build relationships, we communicate, and we have an understanding of each other. Part of the survey is to find out where we are in the classroom.”
The two system goals that LCSS focused on in the survey is: increase student learning, achievement, and college and career readiness, and provide a safe and supportive learning environment, Crane said.
Responses hovered in between 70 and 80 percent range, with some responses hovering in the low 80s, according to the results.
“The survey results, for the most part, clearly show that, on average, we received a 4.0 out of 5 on every question—that they agree,” Crane said. “Looking at that, we did have smaller percentages that disagreed, and we are analyzing that data, and student comments as well. There is value in those student comments, and in the strongly disagree. We will share the data with our teachers and admins, and clearly go over that and the comments indicated.”