Beenblossom outlines action plan for next school year

WASHINGTON — High School Principal Teresa Beenblossom has outlined plans for improvements next school year after her first year at the building.

The plan, summarized at a school board meeting last week, includes four goals: increase the number of students on track to graduate, increase the number passing all classes, increase attendance, and decrease behavioral referrals.

“The three main areas we decided we were going to focus on this next year were leadership, infrastructure and universal instruction,” Beenblossom said. “Our goals and the conversations that come out of this came from our leadership team … we decided (they) were things that met district goals as well as things that would be really good for the high school.”

All the goals have specific targets. Beenblossom said they were based on the school’s previous high points, and left room for improvement down the road.

"We set our goal kind of low,“ she said. ”We’re hoping that it increases from that, but we made realistic goals so we could see what we’re doing.“

Goal 1: increase the number of students on track to graduate to 90%

The first goal would represent a 2% increase from current rates, a number Beenblossom said would take about 10 students.

“Right now, our number of students on track … seems lower than what it normally would be,” Beenblossom said at the board meeting. “Mr. (Alex) Klopfenstein created this credit warning system … students at the high school have 64 opportunities to take classes. You only need 56 credits to graduate. Students that weren’t on track to graduate are ones that are 8 credits or more behind right now.”

Beenblossom said the new data would be an essential tool to get kids back on track.

“He would be meeting with his counselor, we would look at has (he) taken an Apex course before, and is he successful in that,” she said, spelling out the steps taken once a hypothetical student is flagged by the system. “If he is, then we’re going to say, ‘OK, let’s get you rolling, you’re going to have three classes in person, and then you’re going to have Apex.’”

Apex courses are the school’s opportunity for makeup credit. While they meet the same criteria as the classes they make up for, they allow students to go at their own pace, giving them a chance to catch up.

“If a student is really dedicated and puts in the work, they’re going to work on it at school, they’re going to work on it at home, and then once they finish that credit, they can take another one,” Beenblossom said. “You don’t have to go the whole nine weeks. So they might be able to comp two credits in a term instead of just one.”

Goal 2: increase the number of students passing all classes to 87%

Like the first goal, the plan to increase the number of students (from 81.38% last school year) is based on stepped up efforts to collect data.

“We looked at the years with lowest percentage of students passing classes and said, ‘That’s our goal,’” Beenblossom said. “2016-17 was where we had the lowest percentage that were failing one course … it’s very easy for us to look at and track. If you see the COVID year, 2020, that’s where our numbers really start to go up.”

The method outlined has several pillars. The first of them is called Jim Knight’s High impact Instruction.

"Jim Knight is an educator who has written a book titled ‘High Impact Instruction,’ and it’s a framework basically, for good teaching,“ Beenblossom said. ”It talks about what are good things you do during the planning process as a teacher, what are things you do in instruction … learning about how we use those strategies and how does that effect our classroom.“

Second, the principal explained what she called a “mid term form for success.”

“Students that are getting a D or an F at the four-week mark, one week before conferences, the student and the teacher will sit down and they’re going to (talk) about, ‘Why do you have an F, what can I do to help you?’” she said. “They’ll fill out a form … so hopefully the teacher takes some ownership in their learning and the teachers learns what their barriers are.”

The approach is a big change, according to Beenblossom.

“What we do this year is more of an autopsy,” she said. “They meet with the student after the F and say … ‘how did this happen, what could we have done differently,’ and so we would rather have a wellness check at the beginning.”

The last piece of the puzzle is a 5th block “academic focus.” Beenblossom said the period of every school day would take a more academic focus for the first term, rather than serving as a more activity-based period.

“We’re hoping that with the freshmen starting strong this way, they will understand how to be a successful in the high school … and then building that relationship with their homeroom teacher,” she said. “Just this fall we’re going to put a halt on some of those other activities and really going to focus academically to help reach our goals.”

Goal 3: increase attendance to 95%

Attendance is another major goal for the district, after it dropped to an all-time low during the pandemic. The 2021-22 attendance rate was 89.27%, according to school records.

“This year attendance was a struggle, not just in Washington school district but in districts surrounding us as well,” Beenblossom said.

Beenblossom said the school planned to rework its attendance policy to meet changing needs.

“Students were allowed to be gone for longer periods of time because you had to quarantine for so many days,” she said. “Once we have come back and we’re back on track with school … we’re back to following what we had before COVID. Attendance is important, you need to be here.”

Those reworks will spread across the district, which currently has slightly different rules in each building.

“There were different attendance policies in all four of the buildings the way that we did things,” she said. “I think that in itself, students and families and parents knowing our attendance polices (are) the same throughout the district.”

The other piece of the puzzle is what Beenblossom called engagement strategies. Beenblossom said the goal was to get kids excited to come to school.

“We’re going to be relying a lot on school spirit and bringing that school spirit back so they’re excited to be there,” she said. “They want to be at school, they feel like they’re missing out on something if they’re not there. So we’re trying to bring that all together as we work on parts of this policy.”

In a follow-up interview, Beenblossom said that would take a mindset shift.

“We’re looking at celebrating everyone,” she said. “Let’s say a band is going to a competition. We want to celebrate and have a pep rally for the bands as they go off to competitions … spreading that spirit throughout everyone so at all times, we’re celebrating each other. I think it’s super important that people feel like they are safe, cared for and valued.”

Goal 4: decrease major behavioral referrals by 12%

Washington High School wrote up 199 major behavioral referrals this school year, according to Beenblossom. The goal is to lower that number to 175.

The principal said those referrals were concentrated to a small group of students that needed help.

“There were 38 freshman that had 101 of those referrals, and 35 of those 101 were in November,” she said. “We’re tracking the data very closely, we’re looking at a lot of things, we’re trying to figure out what the factors are and we’re trying to leverage that so we can help those students during those difficult times.”

Beenblossom said school spirit would hopefully impact referrals as much as attendance, but more concrete safety nets were also needed.

“That would hopefully address some of those behavioral issues, and decrease those major referrals,” she said. “We also have a system in place called the learning supports team. That’s for individuals that struggle either academically or with behavior, and providing more support so we can help them be successful.”

Still, the steps boil down one primary focus of the district in the last several years, a term administrators call “Capturing Kids Hearts.”

“Creating relationships is really, really important,” Beenblossom said. “We want to create as many relationships for students as possible so that they can feel successful.”

Much of that job falls to teachers. Beenblossom said top-quality instruction would be key to keeping kids successful.

“Just punishing doesn’t change a behavior,” she said. “There might be consequences, but the consequence itself doesn’t change the behavior, and so there has to be a teaching component.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com