McGinnis wants the council to continue to focus on the improved learning of students. He congratulated the council on the recent success of the district. Trigg County public schools were recognized in the top 25 percent by the Kentucky School Board Association and were designated an "Exemplary Growth District."
However, even with the recent success the elementary scores were ten points below the state average. McGinnis points out that Science scores were up 11.5 points in two years while writing was only up 3.7 points. He believes that students should be able to have high achievements in all subjects.
McGinnis has asked the site-based councils from all three Trigg County Public Schools to look at what worked and what didn't work from the past two years. He asked them to evaluate the use of their Title funds and staffing allocations. The site-based councils will be evaluating what is effective in addressing the gap issues.
Another concern of McGinnis was the ability to recognize proficient work. Both teachers and students must be able to recognize proficient work in order to achieve it. Teachers need to understand how to encourage proficient work from students.
As a way to better evaluate student learning, from now on Walk-throughs from the Superintendent will not focus on teacher performance. McGinnis wants to see how involved students are in the learning process in the classroom. McGinnis presented to the council that teaching decisions should be based on research based practices that are working as opposed to personal opinion.
Both the council and Mr. McGinnis agreed that parental involvement in the school system would have a positive influence. They will be looking at ways to continue to increase parent and community involvement in the schools. McGinnis also presented the idea of squelching the negativity in order to make a more positive learning environment.
McGinnis will be meeting with the Elementary Site Based Council again soon to discuss more ideas to continue with student improvement. McGinnis said that he was pleased with the performance of both teachers and students over the last biennium. However, to continue to improve the council must evaluate what works best for the students.
The next Elementary Site Based Council meeting will be held on Monday, February 21 at 3:30p.m.
