Snyder ISD trustees have set certain goals for the school district. Now they’re in the process of reviewing how well those goals are being met.
During their Thursday meeting, trustees held a work session to see how well they and the district are performing in meeting goals set in 2018.
The board at that time set five goals for the district, including improved performance by economically disadvantaged students on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test, in accordance with Lonestar Governance (LSG) guidelines they adopted during the 2017-18 school year.
Thursday, they met with Laurie Elliott, a Texas Education Agency representative who acts as the district’s LSG coach to determine how far the district has come in meeting those goals.
Elliott reviewed data with administrators earlier Thursday before meeting with trustees.
Board of trustees President Ralph Ramon said Thursday’s assessment came with a mixture of good news and bad news.
“Some campuses showed growth in meeting those goals and some kind of flatlined,” he said. “So, we have to go back and tell those campuses, ‘Even though we grew, we didn’t grow enough, so everybody is going to have to work a little harder.’”
Although it is the task of administrators to set the board’s goals into motion, part of the reason for the lack of sufficient academic growth, Ramon conceded, rests at the trustees’ feet.
“Last night was, ‘This is what you set,’” he said. “She gave us her recommendations and basically told us the goals we set were good, but we’re not doing a good job of explaining them. We determined we need to do a better job of simplifying the goals in order to better communicate what we want this district to accomplish. After all, it’s our job as trustees to communicate the district’s goals to administrators and the public.”
Ramon said the board will refine its goals and restraints over the course of the next few weeks before officially adopting them during a meeting set for Sept. 12.
But the trustees’ work won’t be finished then. In fact, their work will be in some respects just beginning, Ramon said.
“One of the things we have to do better at is focusing on community engagement. We need to do a lot better at that,” Ramon said. “We’re trying to figure out a way to simplify these goals so we can better communicate them to parents. A lot of these goals focus on how low socio-economic students perform on the STAAR and we need to find a way to engage with the parents of those students. We can put all this information out there, but the parents don’t show up. We have to do a better job at that.”