CISD principals share improvement plans

By Lindsey Vaculin

General Manager

The Cameron ISD Board of Trustees heard from district principals about plans to improve their campus’s test scores at its meeting on Oct. 10.

Each principal shared the campus improvement plan for his or her campus.  Assistant Superintendent Susan Pommerening shared the district’s improvement plan. Most of those plans focused on improving writing skills across the district.

“Each campus will share their improvement plan highlights with you,” CISD Superintendent Allan Sapp said. “We have heard about some areas where we have some concern, so this is so you can see the plans to attack those areas.”

Ben Milam Elementary Principal Rod Allen said the first thing his campus will address is improving writing instruction. He said that part of that is writing every day through academic journaling for each student.

Allen said that the campus is implementing journaling after every lesson.

“The kids are journaling after every lesson and that improves their writing skills,” he said. “We are also using data to help pull up those scores.”

He said that by pulling the district’s third grade scores and working backward they are figuring out how his campus can help to support those TEKS that are tested in the higher-grade levels.

Cameron Elementary Principal Louis Mandanici said his campus is also focusing on reading and writing skills.

He said his campus’s reading scores came back low and they are working to combat that by tracking students reading levels better so they can pull those kids for reading intervention. 

“The main thing we are struggling with is the summarizing,” he said. “This year we purchased some Wilson Foundation phonics kits. We have a lot of kids in third grade sitting on a first grade reading level and asking them to make some high-level comprehension on a reading test isn’t going to happen.”

Mandanici said CES would begin sending home assessments in student’s folders so parents can see where their child is.

Another area campuses are focusing on is the Cameron Prep program. 

Mandanici said the program at Cameron Elementary is more focused on specific intervention for students this year compared to the past.

“Cameron Prep had turned into a babysitting program in a way,” he said. “So we made a change. We are going to select students who we need to work with specifically - the kids who need the intervention.”

Cameron Elementary has also implemented a new character course, headed up by the campuses counselor. The program takes a portion of specials time and focuses on things like bullying or character building.

“A lot of our teachers have said that our students don’t have social skills, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to teach that,” Mandanici said.

Cameron Junior High Principal Wendy Mahan said her campus is focusing hard on writing and intervention for those students that are performing below level.

“Everything we put in place is because of our reading scores,” she said. “They are there for a reason, to address an area that we think we can make stronger. We are focusing on writing. Writing was a systems safeguard on my campus. We needed to improve upon that.”

Mahan said she has had a she has had a writing consultant come in to work with her teachers and has incorporated writing cross-curricular on her campus so that they don’t let writing fall off the table. 

The Junior High campus has implemented specific math and reading days for Cameron Prep.

“Based off of STAR scores we took every student that was not successful and took an elective from them and said they would be in an intervention class,” Mahan said. “Those kids go to that during their enrichment period.” 

She said each intervention class has 12 students or less class and serves as a more specific tutorial program for those kids that need help.

“We are also giving every students a reading inventory every year at the beginning, middle and end of they year to see how they are progressing,” she said.

Yoe High Principal Kenny Driska said his campus is working to establish a culture of academic excellence. 

“We are looking to improve our performance on state assessments,” he said. “One strategy we are using is to use the benchmark testing. We are going to go back to using the end-of-course exams in all core classes. We can track our progress and make sure our students are mastering the TEKS in those courses. This gives us an opportunity to catch those kids who we might lose.”

He said the addition of the C2L Collaborative with Rockdale and Lexington has also been a big plus for his teachers, giving them the opportunity to discuss TEKS and lesson plans with someone who teaches the same subject that they do.

“We are banking on bringing at least 10 percent improvement this year,” Assistant Superintendent Susan Pommerening said. “The C2L Collaborative and focusing on TEKS should be a big help with that.”

“We are pinpointing where the problems are and addressing them,” she said. “The tracking of kids and knowing where they are at this point in time and what we are going to do to make it better. Our teachers are having training to be able to do this and we are working on aligning curriculum across campuses.”

Pommerening said that in the long run the new Pre-K program is going to make a difference by getting those kids in early to start learning.