Teachers present survey results to school board

Ninth-grade students who are struggling academically are actually de-motivated by the traditional A, B, C, D and F system.

That's one of the findings that ninth-grade science teachers Jeff Ehlers, Jolyne Westerby, Clark Plihal, Ruth McDonald and Jon Westerby came up with by surveying 296 ninth-graders.

Ehlers, Jolyne Westerby and Plihal presented their survey results to the Grand Island school board Thursday evening.

Their survey results came from the bottom three quartiles of ninth-grade students.

A student who routinely gets A's and B's on a report card is usually happy to see his or her achievements. A student who gets a "B" one grading period may be motivated to try to get an "A" next time.

But Westerby said a struggling student sees a report card as just another sign of failure and when it comes out, "they're not very happy about it."

"Every student wants to succeed," Ehlers said. "There's not a student who gets up in the morning and says, ’I really hope I blow it today.'"

Part of the problem is that many students simply don't understand how to define success, Ehlers said. For them, success may be showing up to class on time, simply participating in a class discussion or even getting a D-minus on a test, which is at least not an F. They don't understand that success should mean proficiency.

Westerby said homelessness, the inability to afford lunch, mental health issues, learning disabilities, a single-parent who is not healthy, drug issues and abuse issues can all drag down student academic success.

To put it in the language of ninth-grade students, success can be defined as "UGI" for "you got it" and failure can be called "UAGI" for "you ain't got it."

To improve success rates, the teaching team would either advance the UGI kids after a particular unit or give them enrichment activities. UAGI kids were retaught the unit in a compressed period of time, which helped move some into the UGI category. But 66 kids remained at the UAGI level.

Teachers tried to work with students to find out why they weren't getting it. In some cases, they found unfamiliarity with just one word in a test question might prevent students from getting it.

To improve success, teachers worked after 3 p.m. trying to figure out why kids didn't get that day's lesson so they could reteach the very same lesson to kids starting at 8 a.m. the next day.

Board members were told that peer coaches and equipment that would quickly let teachers create spread sheets on student test results might help with the teach, test and reteach cycle. They also heard that additional iPods and DVDs would help students who are aural or visual learners.

In other action, the board approved both the property taxes needed to support the 2008-09 school budget and the levies needed to raise that amount.

The total property taxes needed for this school year are $28.4 million, which requires a total tax rate of $1.197 cents per hundred dollars of property value.

That means the property tax portion of the budget is about $600,000 more than last year, but the total tax rate is $1.197 compared to compared to $1.21 last year.

The board also accepted the bid by Tri-Valley Builders to renovate and enlarge Shoemaker Elementary construction bid for a price of $3.5 million. The company's bid said it can complete the project by October 2009.

The board approved a fifth bus route for the school district. Current routes serve several elementary schools and Westridge Middle School, Barr Middle School, Walnut Middle School and a combination Senior High/Walnut Middle School route. Those current routes are costing $245,000 this school year.

The fifth route also will serve Walnut Middle School students. The route should be running in about a week or perhaps a little longer. The fifth route will cost another $45,000. However, the district budgeted $300,000 to operate the bus routes this school year.