MONTAGUE — With last week’s signing of an agreement between the Gill-Montague Regional School District School Committee and the Gill-Montague Education Association (GMEA) teachers union, new instructional leadership teams are being created.
These teams will be tasked with implementing the goals established for the district by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).
According to DESE’s Accountability Report, Turners Falls High School, Great Falls Middle School and Sheffield Elementary School are all classified by the state as requiring assistance or intervention. On Tuesday, Director of Teaching and Learning Karin Patenaude told committee members that the district is under DESE’s “Accelerated Achievement Partnership” program to ensure progress toward academic improvement targets.
The Accelerated Achievement Partnership includes three branches of intervention: Targeted Assistance, in which DESE provides professional development, needs assessment, coaching and more; District Site Review, in which DESE teams observe and interview school staff and committee members, collect data and create a feedback report; and the Determination Status Review, which includes academic assessment, growth and equitable access analysis.
Patenaude said the classification from the state comes in part due to the underperformance of students with disabilities, which will be a large focus of the intervention work.
“We have been working with that team that is overseeing all of the work that we’re trying to do to meld all of the work into one, so that we can support not only our students with disabilities, but all students in the district,” Patenaude said. “So we’re trying to take all three arms and really just row in the same direction so that we’re not overwhelming students and educators, but actually seeing progress and growth and really trying to come up with a succinct plan that’s targeted.”
As part of intervention efforts, Patenaude said the district is working to unify school improvement plans so all elementary schools are working toward the same goals and students will have the same academic foundation to build on when they arrive to the middle and high school.
“We aligned our district improvement plan and school improvement plans, so that even for Gill Elementary, which is not in Targeted Assistance, they are still working on the same initiatives,” Patenaude explained. “We want early literacy, we want our students reading by [age 3 and] we want to grow our high-quality instructional materials.”
At DESE’s recommendation, the district is also creating a District Instructional Leadership Team (DILT) and a Building Instructional Leadership Team (BILT).
The DILT includes the superintendent, building principals and assistant principals, the director of teaching and learning, and the director of pupil services. The BILT will include 17 staff members, with three representatives from Hillcrest Elementary School, two from Gill Elementary, four from Sheffield Elementary School, five from Great Falls Middle School and Turners Falls High School, one elementary-level special educator, one secondary-level special educator and one staff member working with English language learners.
The agreement between the Gill-Montague Education Association and the School Committee outlines that each BILT member will receive a $2,000 stipend for their work. Their tasks will include attending monthly meetings and assisting in the implementation of instructional initiatives.
“To turn Building Instructional Leadership Team (BILT) decisions into real classroom practice, GMRSD must bridge the gap between macro-strategy (the why and what) and micro-execution (the how),” the Appendix A of the agreement states. “Through the BILT’s leadership, a culture of continued reflective practice will grow as they model and lead professional learning for all educators, as well as provide clear and effective communication on the process, next steps, successes and areas to grow along the way.”
School Committee Chair Jane Oakes explained that the district’s previous agreement with the teachers union was structured so that department chairs were tasked with coordinating initiatives, and the DILT/BILT will replace that structure. The $2,000 stipends were already included in the district budget and will go to BILT members rather than department chairs, as they would have previously.
Patenaude noted the layout of the BILT is similar to the district’s previous system, but instead of having a “related arts” representative, the BILT will have representation from special education. She explained that with budgetary constraints, the district could not pay for both, and given DESE’s focused goals on improving achievement among students with disabilities, the decision was made to include special education reps instead.
The agreement is in effect for just this academic year; however, interim Superintendent Tari Thomas said the goal would be to continue the teams and their work in the future.
“Turnaround work takes quite a few years to accomplish,” Thomas said.
