Eastern BOE discusses status of district goals at June meeting
At the June 17 meeting of the Eastern Camden County Regional School District Board of Education, the district gave a status report on its goals for the 2014–2015 school year.
The list of goals consisted of four objectives set by the district’s advisory council, which includes members of the BOE, student leaders, staff members, committee members and administrators.
According to Robert Cloutier, director of curriculum, instruction and professional development, the goals were increasing the performance of students with disabilities on state assessments in English and math, increasing the number of 11th- and 12th-grade students taking at least one AP exam and AP course, and increasing overall daily attendance.
Regarding students with disabilities, Cloutier said in 2013–2014, which is the latest school performance report available, there was a slight improvement in math scores to 49.1 percent, but the district still did not meet the state target of 70.8 percent.
“The state has significantly moved the target about 5 percentage points each year, which is far surpassing our improvements,” Cloutier said.
For English scores in 2013–14, Cloutier said the district was at 78.2 percent, and although that was below the state target of 80.5 percent, the district met the confidence interval and therefore was counted as meeting the target.
Cloutier credited improvements in the English curriculum, and said for math, the district is continuing to improve on the assessments and benchmarks and hopes to fill a vacant special education position with someone who is highly qualified in math.
For the second district goal of getting more students grades 11 and 12 to take at least one AP exam, Cloutier said the last school performance report had 27.8 percent of students doing so, which was a steady improvement but still below the 35 percent mark the district set for itself.
For the third goal of getting more students in grades 11 and 12 to take at least one AP course, Cloutier said the number was currently at 39.8 percent, just under the 40 percent goal the district had set. Cloutier noted that this year about 800 students took at least one AP course, and for next school year, students with requests for at least one AP course were already more than 900.
“This summer, we are sending six teachers to AP summer institutes. In past summers, we’ve only sent two teachers on average,” Cloutier said.
Eastern Principal Robert Tull Jr. spoke about the fourth district goal of increasing attendance, and said the district was doing so through initiatives such as building a “net” around students who miss days, starting early in the year and including conferences with parents.
For the 2015–2016 year, Cloutier spoke of a fifth goal to be added, which would be research into a new bell schedule that would allow students to take eight classes throughout the year by moving to a common lunch.
