While the school districts will not be receiving a grade for the accountability in 2020, it appears two Union public schools were trending toward an A rating based on data presented by Superintendent Tyler Hansford during its April 2020 regular meeting.
Based on the data compiled by Hansford, Union Elementary School was projected with an A-rating with 578 overall points with last year’s A-rating cutoff at 442 points.
At Union Middle School, it was projected to have about 436 points, which was six points below the previous A cutoff.
“Not only did we outperform the cohort in every grade and every subject, we outperformed them by subset in every grade,” Hansford said. “Our goal in general is to outperform the cohort by 5 percent, and as you can see by grade, not only did we outperform them by 5 percent, most of them were way more than that.”
At Union Elementary School, about 63 percent of students are proficient in English language arts and 74.5 percent in math. More than 90 percent in both categories saw growth, and more than 80 percent of the bottom 25 percent saw growth.
Of third graders, 56 percent were ELA proficient and 67 percent were math proficient. The percentages increased to 70 percent (92 percent growth) in ELA and 82 percent (98 percent growth) in math for fourth graders.
At Union Middle School, 55 percent of students were proficient in ELA while 67 percent were proficient in math.
Fifth grade was the highest performing grade with 62 percent proficient in ELA and 74 percent proficient in math with growth rates of 60 percent for ELA and 65 percent for math. Eighth grade was next with 66 percent outperformed ELA standards and 56 percent outperformed math standards. Eighth grade also had the second most growth with 70 percent in ELA and 76 percent in math.
Sixth grade was next with 52 percent (71 percent growth) for ELA and 66 percent (76 percent growth) for math while seventh grade had proficiency rates of 51 percent (58 percent growth) for ELA and 62 percent (74 percent growth) for math.
In other business, the board approved April 13:
• hired Zachary D. Robinson as UHS principal for 2020-2021 school year.
• hired McKenzie Ingram as an elementary teacher, Sylvia Shea Thrash as a special education teacher, Jennifer Felton as a special education teacher, Connor Buchanan as a middle school history teacher/assistant football coach/assistant fastpitch coach, Hannah Wren as the student services coordinator, Pam Arthur as a half-time work-based learning coordinator and half-time special education, Jennifer Coghlan Jones as coordinator of public and student information and Haley Purvis as full-time employee.
• appointed W.T. Smith as director of career and technical education and district-wide assistant principal contingent on MDE funding.
• approved the UPSD administrative salary and wage schedule, teacher salary schedule and coaching supplement schedule for 2020-2021 school year.
• approved the 2020 IDEA extended school year
• approved the private transportation contracts for disabled pre-k students.
• processed refunds for student paid events.
