Politics & Government

State of the Schools: 'On Excellent Footing'

In her State of the Schools report to the Board of Education, Superintendent of Schools Karen List discussed how the schools are doing, next steps, and the resources needed to reach the district's goals.

Superintendent of Schools Karen List presented the Board of Education with the annual "State of the Schools Report" Tuesday night, stressing that the district's goals and framework for achieving those goals is clear, but urging the Board to remain "forward thinking" as another challenging budget process approaches.

List highlighted the district's positive achievements during the past year, including the highest CMT scores ever, highest CAPT scores ever, most Advanced Placement participation ever, and a significant reduction of the achievement gap for minority students who have been in the West Hartford school system since 3rd grade.

"We are closing the achievement gap, and a substantial number of students are performing at a higher level," List said. As one example, she cited statistics that show 35 percent of students in the category of "Black and Hispanic, Non-English Language Learners, Non-Special Education" moved up at least one level on the math CMT between 3rd and 8th grades.

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Plans for the future, List said, are outlined as "District Strategic Actions." Those actions include:

  • "Using the Model of Continuous Improvement, we will strengthen standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment;
  • "Create an environment and community that fosters intellectually, physically, and emotionally healthy learning and living;
  • "Create the conditions that promote collaborative inquiry through shared and distributed leadership."

In the future, as the adopt the , the curriculum will become even more rigorous and will also incorporate international benchmarks and many of the recommendations made by the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS) NextED "Transforming Connecticut's Education System Continuous Improvement Plan."

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The Board of Education adopted the for 2012-2013 on Tuesday night, and if approved by the Town Council, all West Hartford Public Schools will soon have WiFi capability. "This request is based on our core values of integrating technology effectively and inspiring creativity and innovation," List wrote in her introduction to the State of the Schools Report.

In response to a question from Board Chairman Bruce Putterman about what comes next, List said "The work that’s going on now is the 'next steps.' The focus that we’ve had is getting us these kinds of results so we want to maintain the work that we’re doing ... What influences our progress is our research on all aspects of what we think is good instruction. We’re looking at everything. There are a lot of different sources of information, and we’re not going to pick just one to be the focus of where we’re going."

As for the resources needed to support the schools in the future, List pointed out that West Hartford currently ranks 117th (of 169) in per pupil spending in the state, whereas "a generation ago we were in the top five," she said.

Although the on Wednesday would give West Hartford an additional $919,940, ECS is still significantly underfunded based on the state's formula. "Every bit helps," said Chip Ward, director of Finance and Planning, in response to the announcement of the additional ECS funding.

"When I present my next budget, you can expect a budget that maintains the key programs that have contributed to our progress to date," List said.


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