The Curriculum and Instruction Team recognizes the enormity of change taking place across the district. We appreciate your willingness to embrace these changes as we hold strong to our district focus on high achievement for ALL students.
Marty Bowe - Assistant Superintendent Rebekah Silla - Director of Pupil Services
Debbie Poland - Curriculum Director Joe Hug - Curriculum Coordinator
Jeremy Stangelo – Technology Specialist Mandy Gardinsky – Director of District Continuous Improvement
The District Leadership Team (DLT) held its first meeting on September 12 th , 2011. The focus of the meeting was twofold, to review the
2010-2011 Local Report Card data as well as to revise and update the District Action Plan. As a result of this meeting your Building
Leadership Team (BLT) met to analyze building specific data (focused on individual subgroups) and to define building tasks relative to your action plan.
In the coming weeks the RtI Core Team will be working to better
Our two main intervention supports are well underway and we have made great progress with supporting ALL learners.
define (K-4) our district literacy framework. The goal is to further enhance Tier 1 (CORE) instruction. Additionally, we are looking long term towards providing a similar structure for our No New Teaching
(NNT) time that supports ALL teachers in providing Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions.
Title One Supports:
Title One teachers have been working diligently to strengthen the literacy intervention supports our struggling readers face. Along with this, they have been tasked with exploring and tracking those interventions that yield the best results. These interventions will become part of a district Response to Intervention Toolkit.
A K-12 math committee has been established. To begin, this committee will complete a crosswalk between the current and new common core standards and take steps towards building a course of study.
2011-2012 Math Committee Meeting Schedule:
Elementary Intermediate & Middle High School
The science common assessment results will be analyzed and used to reflect on the newly implemented state standards and curriculum.
We have had very positive response to the consistent implementation of the History Alive program starting with our 5 th students. Our next step is to align this program with the new
Common Core literacy standards for content areas.
We have taken gigantic steps towards full implementation of RtI in the past two months.
A Few Highlights…
We have updated our district framework, RtI process and our district forms.
We have merged RtI and IAT into 1 cohesive system.
We have provided training for 23 building level coaches.
Our two district teams completed their first 2 (of 8) days of PBIS training and have since hit the ground running.
Currently, the focus of the building is on improving hallway behavior. Check out their building webpage to view the video they produced to kick off their hallway blitz. Also, on Saturday,
November 19 th Edison will host their 2 nd Annual Pancake Breakfast.
PHS is preparing to rollout a systematic school-wide plan. They will first focus on improving the use of Study Hall. Within Study Hall students can receive a Panther Paw for exhibiting positive behavior.
Paws are entered in a drawing for various prizes. Additionally, PHS is investigating more defined methods for tracking student behavior.
In response to teacher feedback professional development for co-teaching pairs has been initiated.
General and special education teachers at Pfeiffer and Edison participated in collaborative activities centered on three approaches: one teach, one assist; station teaching; and parallel teaching.

Change is the only constant in the realm of special education! The
Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has provided our special education personnel with an updated version of the IEP
Annotations, which reports exactly what ODE is mandating within a compliant IEP. Among the changes include new guidelines for compliant IEP goals. ODE has also released a “draft” version of the
2011-2012 EMIS form. Upon the final release, training will be provided to those involved. Details of updates in the area of special education may be found at www.edresourcesohio.org
.
Jeff Jackson, Nicole Netzly and Vickie Briercheck attended the Ohio
Association for Gifted Children conference in October. The keynote speaker, Dr. Shelagh A. Gallagher, gave a passionate presentation regarding the need for rigor and high expectations for our brightest and best students. As a district, it is crucial that we use assessments, such as the Explore test, to help us understand where our students rank nationally. It is also crucial that we extend our efforts relative to differentiation and incorporate more creativity and problem solving into our lessons.
Our district paraprofessionals and team members have recently completed a “Self-Sufficiency Profile” for the student(s) with whom they work. The newly implemented rubric will provide IEP teams with data to guide decision-making leading to student independence. The rubrics will be reviewed with the paraprofessionals at their training on November 10, 2011.
The Department of Pupil Services serves as the district’s Homeless
Liaison contact. The McKinney-Vento
Homeless Assistance Act indicates steps that we must take as a district to protect the educational rights of children and youth in homeless situations. Building secretaries will be receiving updated information to post and have available to parents and staff within their buildings.
This year we will begin an exciting project in which our district ELL teacher, Carolyn Stearns, will work in conjunction with the county and several other surrounding school districts' ELL departments to develop a uniform ELL training video series for classroom teachers and administrators. This series will be more specific to the needs of the ELLs in our district and teacher input will be a valuable part of the process. Stay tuned for more details in the near future!
The College Board has named Perry Local School District as 1 of 367 school districts in the nation to be recognized on its AP
Achievement List! We will be highlighted for opening AP classroom doors to a significantly broader pool of students, while maintaining or improving the percentage of students earning scores of 3 or higher. PHS now offers 10 AP courses. This year alone, more than
175 college credits will be eligible for our students through the AP program. This is an inspirational benchmark for our district!
Phase one of implementing our new technology programs is complete. Trainings on all programs have occurred, so now onto incorporating these tools into our daily practices.
Great Job elementary teachers for getting your students benchmarked so quickly. This screening data helped in our identification of struggling students across the district. Keep in mind that the teacher who provides the intervention also needs to be progress monitoring.
New data is being loaded into Testingwerks weekly as the tech department works to backfill data. Hopefully, you have had the time to use some of this data to help with flexible grouping and target students for intervention and enrichment. Our next step is to input quarterly common assessment results which will enhance our data analysis and guide our next steps instructionally.
All 5 th -12 th grade students should have at least one assessment using SRI. The lexile reading levels should assist students and teachers with selecting appropriate materials and designing lessons.
SMART LE clicker systems are in place for kindergarten through second grade. Thanks to all staff who have worked to construct the engaging activities and assessments for these students!
Our IEPA representative has stated that we can look forward to enhanced updates in December!
IEPA plans to implement an “automatic save” feature; improved student and district-level reporting options; and an updated EMIS data reporting section.
At a recent statewide meeting, Stark county was ranked 3 rd in the state in terms of dual credit offerings to high school students. Dual credit, or dual enrollment, refers to courses that high school students take and simultaneously receive high school and college credit. PHS teachers are certified by local colleges to teach collegeapproved courses right here at PHS. As the only Stark County school district offering a full 2-yr Associates Degree within our high school walls, Perry is clearly leading the way state-wide in this area. It’s no surprise that literally hundreds of parents turned out at last week’s meeting to learn more about the program. This has been a key component to helping us reach nearly 80% in the number of graduates entering college within two years of graduation from
Perry. Go Perry!!!