Katherine Brennan/Rogers School - Connecticut State Department ...

Hill Central School
School Improvement Grant – Section B: Descriptive Information
consultants will provide opportunities for the staff to enhance and enrich the core program through greater
attention to interdisciplinary instruction, higher order thinking skills, authentic performance tasks, and
more rigorous research skill development.
*See document (6) NHPS’s Three-Tiered Model K - 8 at end of Section B
The Superintendent will hire a new Director of Instruction for Turnaround / Transformational Schools to
be assigned to Hill Central and the other three SIG schools. He/she will be responsible for evaluating the
school principal, as well as providing direct support to Hill Central to ensure successful implementation
of the SIG requirements.
There is a systematic approach to using and sharing data in the NHPS. Schools are responsible for
establishing grade level and school wide data teams. The principal and the Literacy Coach are critical to
the success of these teams and have a responsibility to report data analysis, student performance goals,
and Tier II (Adult Action) indicators to the Superintendent and his executive team. Hill Central has
received excellence assistance from the CALI initiative and through the SIG proposal they are planning to
increase the number of days for CALI professional development and leadership coaching at Brennan.
With support and direction from the Reading Supervisor, Hill Central has been provided with a set of
alternative approaches, programs and strategies for teaching reading skills to Tier II and Tier III students.
The establishment of such alternatives comes from the data that suggests such a need. The Hill Central
Redesign Team will continue to investigate other approaches that might better meet the differentiated
learning needs. As part of SIG, Hill Central will undergo an audit of special education and ELL programs
to develop more strategic plans for meeting the needs of diverse learners. With support from the Director
of Instruction for Turnaround / Transformational Schools, they will develop mechanisms for greater
collaboration between regular education, special education and bilingual education.
Increasing learning time is inherent in the new Turnaround School. The Hill Central Redesign Team will
develop a matrix of current extended day programs to determine which practices work best and which are
in need of refinement or removal. They will then begin to investigate alternatives to extended day
programs that will make the most impact on improving student performance in reading, writing, math and
science. By the end of the summer, there will be a strategic plan and schedule in place to begin a system
for increasing learning time for our students. We are also confident that through the development of
interdisciplinary units with a SIOP focused lesson design, we will improve upon the teaching and learning
time. Plans are also being made to include parents in a reading homework training model. As previously
mentioned, Hill Central, as a district Tier III school, may become required to increase the length of the
school day at which point the Hill Central Redesign Team will develop schedules and processes to
improve and increase student learning time and teacher professional development time during the actual
school day.
There are promotional opportunities for Lead Teachers and grade level Teacher Leaders. A co-teacher
model will be put into place at the lower grade levels and opportunities for Master Teachers to train under
the new SCDE TEAM program will be made available. Other financial and/or resource incentives will be
developed by the school’s Redesign Team over the summer and throughout the school year.
Hill Central staff will continue their training in the School Wide Positive Behavioral Intervention and
Support (PBIS) program for improving student behavior through a systematic, sequential approach. SIG
will enable Hill Central to continue school wide professional development with greater fidelity to the
implementation of this program.