2014-15 Contract for Excellence Narratives
Program Narrative - Please address changes in your existing C4E programs, including any redesign or reallocation.
Also, describe how activities support the Regents Reform Agenda.
The District will maintain Time on Task efforts by focusing on aspects of the instructional core and providing targeted instruction and intervention to
students. AVID teachers and teaching assistants will continue to enhance our ability to provide targeted small group tutoring as well as individual
instruction, and we will continue to support literacy and numeracy skills for students who are underperforming in all middle schools via ELA,
mathematics, and reading teachers. This will also include supports provided to us through the implementation of Say Yes to Education. While the
District will continue to support an extension of the school year with our summer programming, we no longer claim it on our contract. The extended
day program at Seymour has been redesigned and will be supported differently in 2014-15, along with twelve other schools implementing an extended
learning time model for 100% of the students enrolled in those schools.
Full-day Kindergarten and PreK programs will be maintained. PreK classes at Grant Middle School will continue to be held at other locations within
the District, and additional full-day PreK classes will be opened at HW Smith K-8 School.
The district has reduced many of the Teacher Principal Quality Initiatives from the contract from prior years but has enhanced teacher and principal
professional development throughout the calendar year. Instructional Coaches for math and literacy are primarily being supported with grant funds.
Several positions for Administrative Interns and PAR (Peer Assistance Review) positions have been maintained, and additional PAR positions have
been added to support the increase in new hires in 2014-15. We will have nearly 200 new teachers to support through PAR consultants next year. To
support new principals in the district, we are seeking mentoring support form successful school leaders within and outside of the district. We will also
be adding Administrative Interns in schools that have a student-to-administrator ratio higher than 250:1.
The District will maintain the redesign with the continuation of High School smaller learning academies, the Institute of Technology high school, the
restructure of HW Smith and ED Smith to K-8 schools, the Syracuse University Project Advance (SUPA) program, and the Expeditionary Learning
Middle School. Our high school alternative program and the addition of a newly structured middle school alternative program will be supported,
instead of the previous BEST programs at our five larger middle schools. Previously, Blodgett K-8 was closed and restructured to a middle school,
Westside Academy at Blodgett. Hughes Elementary School is being phased out; therefore this building only has grades 2-5 this year, whereas last year
the building had grades 1-5. We will be opening The Syracuse Latin School in September of 2014, which will initially serve students in full-day
kindergarten and first grade.
The district will also continue the Newcomer program and sheltered English as a Second Language programming due to the continued growth of the
English Language Learner population. ELL Programs are new to the contract over the past four years. We plan to open a new school at Delaware’s
campus in 2014-15 for full-day kindergarten to offer bilingual instructional programming for students.
In addition, we will be restructuring Fowler High School to open a new school focused on challenging academic content and learning opportunities
through career and technical education (CTE) programs for the inaugural class of incoming ninth grade students.
NYSED – Office of Educational Management
2/7/2016
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2014-15 Contract for Excellence Narratives
Targeting Narrative - Please address both student educational need and building-level accountability status as
reflected in the attached Targeting Matrix. Explain how the district and school Comprehensive Plan supports the
program. (See 2011-12 Accountability Status: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/accountability/designations/home.html)
All C4E funds have been targeted to C4E identified schools following the Educational Need Matrix. We are targeting ELL students and literacy and
numeracy initiatives with school-based literacy and math instructional coaches and additional ELA and math teachers. We are targeting PreK-12
students with the implementation of our Say Yes to Education program to address socio-emotional needs and extended day learning supports in all
quadrants of the District. In addition, we will still maintain full-day PreK classes added since 2007 and support to our AVID and intervention
programs.
Performance Narrative - Describe the district's expected performance targets for the accountability criteria and
disaggregated groups for which the school has failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in the past year.
The Syracuse City School District was identified in 2004 as a District in Need of Improvement for English Language Arts achievement for the student
with disabilities (SWDs) and English language learners (ELLs) subgroups. Since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act waiver, all of our
schools are identified as either Priority or Focus Schools. While our graduation rate remains relatively stable, we have large numbers of students not
graduating in four or five years and/or dropping out.
The percentage of students living in poverty continues to increase each year with more than 80% of our students qualifying for free or reduced meals
during the 2013-14 year. More than 20% of our K-12 students are identified as students with disabilities and over 13% of our students are English
Language Learners. These high risk factors are challenges faced by all of our schools and our community as a whole. As a result, many interventions
or initiatives that are implemented are done so District-wide to improve student achievement in all schools with additional supports and interventions
placed in our most underperforming schools to support students who are not performing at grade level, students with disabilities and ELLs.
We piloted a Newcomer Program in the 2009-10 school year to address the needs of students coming to the District with little or no formal education
in their native language. This program will assist in decreasing our ELL dropout rate, and our sheltered approach to ESL instruction will provide more
support to students in need of English language development. We are also still not graduating a high percentage of our students with disabilities,
another at-risk group in SCSD.
Our schools in highest academic need also have a high level of poverty and in many cases high numbers of ELLs and students with disabilities, who at
times account for more than a third of a school’s overall student population. Our struggling students need more time and intervention to close
achievement gaps through after school programs, summer school, specialized ELA and math courses designed to catch students up, and individual and
small group tutoring and instruction. The increase of ELA, math and AVID teachers who use differentiated instruction to meet the needs of these at
2013-14
Contract
for Excellence
Narratives
risk students, including those with disabilities
and ELLS,
will better support
all students toward
graduating from high school college and career ready.
NYSED – Office of Educational Management
2/7/2016
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2014-15 Contract for Excellence Narratives
Our Say Yes to Education Project will assist in supporting afterschool programs, summer programs, tutorials, and higher education incentives to
encourage students to stay in school, graduate and go on to college. Say Yes will also provide socio-emotional supports for students in the primary
grades as well as legal services for families, mentoring for our middle level students, mental health services, increased social workers in our buildings
and a new student assessment system.
Experimental or District-wide Programs Narrative - If applicable.
The District will continue to support our PAR (Peer Assistance Review) program with four PAR Teachers as part of the Teacher Principal Quality
Initiatives. Because of an increase in new hires in 2014-15, we will be adding another two PAR consultants to support the new teachers.
We will also continue to support our high school alternative program with four core curriculum teachers, one special education teacher, and two
teaching assistants. The High School Alternative Program was restructured in 2012-13 to provide instruction through a blended learning model of inperson and online instruction. We are also redesigning our middle schools alternative education option and are locating it at one school site with
transition support back to home schools. Some students in our alternative programs are at risk due to behavioral and severe academic concerns, and
moving to smaller community-based sites allows for more personal involvement with each student, as well as focuses resources and support so that
students get the academic, behavioral and socio-emotional support needed to get back on track and be successful in school.
NYSED – Office of Educational Management
2/7/2016
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