LAURINBURG — The Scotland County Board of Education met for its monthly meeting on Monday and learned that, despite original hesitations on the new Istation program, staff feels like it will be beneficial to the students.
Istation is an initiative from the state superintendent for North Carolina schools for K-3 and is a reading assessment program that allows students to work and progress at their own pace. The program provides immediate feedback to teachers on the students progress.
The program will be replacing mClass so there wouldn’t be as many tests for the students, however, Istation does have monthly tests with three of those filling in for the EVAAS data.
The new program was awarded the contract on June 7, giving only a limited amount of time for teachers to learn the system, which gave some hesitations to how beneficial the program would be.
Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Valerie Williams spoke to the board at the July meeting about Istation and brought back more information on Monday after attended several more Istation meetings.
“I’ve been really pleased with what Istation is turning out to be,” Williams said. “It’s something where they can look at it as a progress monitoring tool and it’s different for every child based on how they score.”
This year there won’t be a beginning of the year assessment with Istation but there will be a beginning of the year and end-of-the-year assessments and 30-day benchmarks. The benchmark dates are not set by the program but instead the schools and there are currently tentative dates set but Williams explained she wanted to run them by teachers and principals before setting them.
The board did express some concerns about teachers getting continuous training on the new system and Williams explained that the teachers will be getting monthly training on the new program.
“I’m trying to push this back out to the teachers and to encourage them that if they have questions they need to be addressing it,” said Board Chairman Rick Singletary. “To get that information and do nothing with it is a waste of time. I’m throwing it out for Scotland County it’s time for us to make a quantum leap with our growth with student instruction… It’s time to grow and show what we’re working with.”
Williams told the board that, on Aug. 20, all K-3 teachers, principals, assistant principals and facilitators will have a training for the new program.
“This is something that is really solid for students that’s going to make a difference,” Williams said. “If we don’t believe in it, how are we going to get the teachers to believe in it? It is something that can really make a difference for the students.”
In other business:
— Superintendent Ron Hargrave told the board that the beginning teacher orientation began Monday with 25 brand-new teachers participating in the orientation.
— The custodial team from Sycamore Lane Elementary was given the key player award for their work during the merge with Covington Street Elementary and for the continuous work they put in at the school.
— CTE Coordinator Felicia Ingram was also given the key player award as she has served the schools for 12 years and is leaving the district.
— The board heard from Larry Obeda, Scotland County Schools executive director of auxiliary services, gave an update on the construction of South Johnson Elementary School. The school is still on schedule and one the buildings already has Sheetrock being placed in it.
Reach Katelin Gandee at 910-506-3171 or at kgandee@laurinburgexch.wpenginepowered.com
