ALBANY CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
HACKETT MIDDLE SCHOOL- RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION SUBCOMMITTEE
MEETING MINUTES - October 6, 2014
Facilitators: Roger Rooney, Christine Rizzo, Principal Michael Paolino
Recorder: Susan Danna
Members Present: Judy Collins, Lisa House, Stephon Frost, Ava Holt, Andrea Marques, Megan Vacca,
Dr. Amodeo, Gina Norton, Ann Marie Butt, Shanell Brown, Dr. Cathy Amodeo, Allisen Brodie
Members Not Present:
Meeting Started: 3:15 PM
Meeting Ended: 4:35 PM
Please note that future meetings will begin at 3:10 PM and end at 4:15 PM.
1.
Students Under Review by RTI Committee – Students who have been discussed and are under
review in this school year will be updated at the next meeting.
2. Review of Team Meetings Held This Morning with RTI Attendance - This morning saw the first
set of team meetings. Mr. Rooney summarized the focus of the meetings as being Tier 1
strategies and data with the goal of addressing the needs of students in the overall program.
This approach matches the District RTI Committee guidance of taking this planning path for the
2014-15 school year. Through this Tier 1 approach, all middle school teams in the district will
become more familiar with the process of examining student data, drawing conclusions, making
plans, implementing and re-evaluating the results with the making of a subsequent new plan.
This is a circle of planning which should become routine for teams and all our middle schools by
the end of the year. The RTI team members at the team meetings for the grade levels will help
facilitate this process on Monday’s in terms of data.
3. The Maze data from this past session will be updated and made more complete for examining in
the October 20 meeting.
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How Did the First Monday Team Meetings Go? - Generally, meetings were successful with the
tone and participation at each meeting varying but generally positive.
Mr. Paolino entered the meeting at this point and offered his thoughts:
Although the meetings went well, he encouraged more hands on involvement of the staff with
the data, elbow to elbow. The teachers should be given the data after the team would model
examples of how to analyze the information and draw inferences and conclusions from it. The
smaller teacher teams should actively note what is noticed as significant in the data and
summarize with questions and conclusions about what was noticed and noted. The teams
would report out to the whole group at the end.
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4.
The AIMSWEB triangle should be given to the teams with student names listed. Such a list
already exists. It may also exist in a ranked fashion from NWEA. Making the diagram of
performance more specific will spur productive discussion among team members. The data will
become more meaningful to teachers. Perhaps a “cheat sheet” of guidance for examining data
would offer support to teachers as they work in teams.
Teacher teams should work closely together and dig into data, not feeling confined to sitting n a
circle meeting structure which may not foster as much collaboration.
A re-visit to a middle school in Brooklyn with an advanced RTI program in place may be in order.
Data should be disaggregated to show subgroups – ELL, Special Ed, males, females, etc. – this
will help target strategies.
Ms. McCabe spoke for her special education students stating that there needs to be a renewed
focus on their programming as the special ed program enters a more self -contained format this
year. Results with a co-teaching approach last year proved productive. This success needs to be
continued. If special education teachers are to provide reading instruction for students, they
need more staff development in reading methods and research.
Additional Thoughts - We should all be cognizant of the difference in reading time from
elementary school to middle school. (90+45 minutes for Tier 2 and 3 students compared to 45
+45 minutes for middle school students in AIS or special reading). Adding some reading time
(5 minutes?) in all areas that is based on actual class work would help compensate for the loss of
reading time as students progress to secondary. This will be discussed more in future meetings.
A Timeline and Overall Plan for implementing the full cycle of team planning in the RTI
process needs to be developed and shared with teams. Times and specific team goals will help
focus team work as we progress. Times to evaluate the process along the way would be needed
too.
- Vocabulary Development was noted as a key variable in student success as they encounter
more complex text in all subjects at Hackett.
- Language Study – the study of complex words, phrases, sentence structure, paragraph structure
were all seen as another key to scaffolding student work with complex text.
- Writing Skill Development - Again is a key factor for student improvement if ELA Common Core
results are to improve and overall student success in high school is to be fostered.
- Reading On or a Little Above Level is a key for successful independent reading. Scaffolded
reading assists in enabling students to deal with more complex texts. Strategies for
encountering complex texts need to be a focus.
- Strategy Development will be addressed by Mrs. House during Tuesday’s team meetings while
the examination of student work on Wednesday’s will make the study more concrete and
hands- on.
5. Scheduling of AIS and Special Reading Students – The sixth grade students can be
accommodated in the moving of students from Tier 3 to Tier 2 and Tier 2 to Tier 3. Students
who are at or above grade level in AIS right now will be accommodated through a differentiated
program using matched materials and centers to address their needs. If an opportunity to
adjust their schedules comes later in the year, this will be taken. 7th and 8th graders who are
waiting for special reading and are in AIS will have to be prioritized in terms of level of need and
be accommodated in AIS right now. This will be an ongoing effort to accommodate this set of
students through the year.
6. RTI Survey – Mrs. Marques asked that a survey on the beginning status of the RTI work this year
be distributed and completed by Survey Monkey on line in the next few days. It is a short
survey and will be followed by an end of year evaluation survey in June.
7. Next Meeting – Monday, October 20 in Office Conference Room
Thank you to all who attended.