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the orland park prairie | October 6, 2016 | 3
Orland School D135 Board of Education
Professional development,
grading scale updates are
in their early stages still
Lennan II
from the upper $200’s
Meredith Dobes
Freelance Reporter
Improving grading and
professional development
practices for efficiency,
cost effectiveness and clarity,
respectively, were the
primary focuses of the Orland
School District 135
Board of Education’s Sept.
26 meeting.
Director of Curriculum
Dave Snyder gave brief
presentations on both topics.
He said he and his team
did an analysis on the district’s
current professional
development practices,
brainstormed new ideas
and compared current practices
to those of other districts.
This past school year, the
district spent $165,802 on
professional development
sessions during school
days, including the costs of
substitute teachers, Snyder
said. This was in addition
to the total cost of summer
professional development
sessions — which teachers
were paid to attend — of
$89,664.
Snyder said the summer
costs were entirely covered
by Title I and II grants from
the State.
Snyder and his team
looked into other options
for the district’s future
professional development,
including remote learning
— such as video clips, for
example — through which
each certified staff member
would be required to
complete eight hours of
this training per year. This
would cost the district
$77,048 each year, he said.
Another option discussed
was early release days.
Snyder said some local
districts have these days as
often as once a month for
teacher professional development.
Some plan early
release days before institute
days or for a Friday
before a Monday holiday.
Snyder said D135 would
require approximately twoand-a-half
hours of professional
development every
other month, from September-May,
and if the district
implemented remote learning,
it would cut down on
the amount of time teachers
would be asked to be away
from their classrooms.
Board Member Devin
Hodge said using multiple
options for professional
development appeared to
be the most cost-effective
for the district, and Board
President Laura Berry said
she was in favor of keeping
teachers in classrooms with
their students as much as
possible.
Berry said the district
also needed to pursue what
would be “least painful”
for parents in terms of early
release days.
The district had a “robust”
calendar of professional
development days at
the beginning of the school
year, Snyder said, but it is
going back to the drawing
board to determine what
would be most efficient for
the remainder of the year.
Next, the board discussed
both its Partnership for Assessment
of Readiness for
College and Careers test results
and a possible update
to its grading system.
Assistant Director of
Curriculum Brian Fogarty
presented the district’s
PARCC results from the
previous year. The district
ranked in the 50th percentile
for the English/language
arts portion of the
test, compared to the state
average of 37 percent, and
it ranked in the 46th percentile
in math, compared
to a 32 percent state average.
Fogarty said that because
the test was different than
the spring 2015 test, it was
not useful to compare 2016
results with 2015 results.
“Making curriculum decisions
is very hard for us
to do,” he said in regard to
using test results. “We will
continue to work with local
assessments to make these
decisions.”
In the summer, it was
announced that the State
decided to do away with
PARCC testing at the high
school level, but it is still a
requirement for elementary
schools.
D135 uses Measure of
Academic Progress (or
MAP) testing to measure
student growth, as well,
and Fogarty said he is confident
this is a useful measure
for the district. It has
used the test for 15 years.
The discussion transitioned
into another brief
presentation on grading
practices from Snyder, who
said that after conferring
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