By T. Scott Boatright
A new year with the same officers.
That’s what is ahead for the Lincoln Parish School Board after President Gregg Phillips and Vice President were both reelected without opposition during the LPSB monthly meeting Tuesday night at the Central Schools Office.
LPSB members Otha Anders, George Mack and Donna Doss were absent from the meeting.
Officer elections opened the meeting with parish attorney James Buckley overseeing matters. LPSB District member David Ferguson made both nominations. After Phillips was nominated to his position as president, Buckley asked the Board if it had any other nominations to be made, Buckley closed the election and announced Phillips as the returning LPSB president.
The same thing happened after Williams was the only nominations made (again by Ferguson), Buckley announced her as returning vice president in a process that took only 1:18 to complete.
Phillips said a primary focus for the School Board during the new calendar will be a focus on reading scores.
Under a law Louisiana’s Legislature passed in 2023, schools have 30 days from testing to develop reading improvement plans for children who score well below grade level on any of the yearly exams.
Students who receive “well below” on their end-of-year tests will be given two additional opportunities to achieve a higher score before the beginning of the next school year.
Under the new state requirements, third-grade students that remain unable to improve after that will not be allowed to move to fourth grade, though the law allows exemptions in certain instances, including for students diagnosed with dyslexia and English learners who have been in a language program for fewer than two years.
“I think the thing we’re kind of keeping our eyes on is what Dr. Williams mentioned earlier — the reading scores next year that are coming down from the state,” Phillips said. “Those are things we’ve got our eyes on.
“As a district, we want to make sure that we are successful (this spring) when it comes to testing for next year. We want to make sure our kids are at least at the needed level and hopefully above it.”
Williams stressed the LPSB’s desire to have its students be the best readers they can be.
“Our goal is to be the No. 1 school system, so that’s something we’ll collaborate on and work together to support in making happen,” Williams said.
During the meeting Board members received a DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) Middle of the Year report from Parish Supervisor of Testing Lillie Williams-Hearn and Michelle Thrower, kindergarten through second grade literacy coordinator.
Williams-Hearn told the Board that overall parish students in kindergarten through third grade showed an increase of 8.1% in benchmark scores from beginning of the year testing done in August and September to middle of the year testing done in December.
As could be expected, the biggest improvement came in kindergarten, which had 25.1% of students meeting in beginning of the year testing with an increase to 52.3% in middle of the year testing.
Beginning of the year testing showed 50.9% of third-grade students meeting state proficient benchmark numbers with an increase to 55.5% during middle of the year testing, an increase of 4.6%.
First graders showed only a .1% increase from the start of the school year to December while second graders had a 2.5% increase in benchmark scores.
Thrower told the board the school district’s target for end of year testing was a 70% proficiency rating.
“I’m never going to be happy until we’re at 100%, but we are trying to increase that proficiency rate every year,” Thrower said. “For those students who are below proficiency, we write an individual academic support plan for each student. In that support plan, we identify which interventions we are using to address the deficiencies the students are showing in their reading skills.
“We meet with parents and share that information with them. Some of those interventions could be high-dosage tutoring happening during the school day. All of our students are enrolled in a program called Lexia (a computer-based program), which is building on their foundational skills. We also have small-group intervention with the classroom teacher because the classroom teacher is the one most equipped to help students who are struggling with foundational needs.”
Thrower said students below proficiency levels are being monitored weekly to see if attempts to increase their reading ability are working. We are also sharing with parents during meetings with them how they can try and help reduce deficiencies.”
Phillips said another priority the LPSB is facing is coming up with a long-range plan for the Lincoln Parish school district.
“That’s something we’re working on now,” Phillips said. “And we’ll be coming out with more on that soon, but we’re looking at facilities, looking at the organization of the district and just making sure we know what we need to do over the next 20 years.
“So, I think that long-range plan is something we’re already focused on and hopefully this spring and summer we’ll get down that road pretty good.”
Making sure there are adequate resources for schools will be another priority moving forward into 2025.
“We’ll be making sure we have the resources we need for both teachers and students,” Williams said. “That’s our job as a school board — to make sure our teachers and students all have what they need to be successful.”
