School board raises questions on academic achievement goals

Board members disagree on equity, underserved populations, and social/emotional learning 

[  By Kendra Walker  ]

During the October 3 Gunnison Watershed School District board meeting, superintendent Dr. Leslie Nichols presented a draft of the district’s Unified Improvement Plan (UIP), which provides a high-level view of identified challenges that the district plans to focus on. 

Based on the district’s performance framework and data from school assessments, the three main challenges identified in the UIP include academic achievement improvement through targeted universalism, low participation in student assessments and staff professional development. These all tie into the district’s five goals to have successful students, strong employees, engaged community, healthy finances and functional facilities. 

While discussing academic achievement, Nichols noted that historically underserved student populations (a broad term used in education and social sciences for groups such as English learners, minorities, special education students and those who qualify for free/reduced lunch) demand more focused attention. Based on assessments for GWSD, the achievement ratings for all grade levels and all disaggregated groups stayed the same or declined from 2019 to 2022, and all percentiles and raw scores declined.

“Are we underserving any population in our school district and if we are I want to know who, what, where, when and why,” said board member Dave Taylor. “Do we underserve the students in our school district?”

“That’s a question I’d have to have a little more time to reflect on,” said Nichols. “That’s part of the plan for addressing this achievement concern, is to do a deeper assessment of how have our kids done relative to, for example, other English learners across the state…I don’t think there’s been any conscious underserving of any group in our school district but, has there actually been, I don’t have an answer for that tonight.” 

“If we have issues serving students who need more help, we need to help those students,” said Taylor. “Anyone who needs help in our school district, and I don’t care what history says how they’ve been served, those students should not have been underserved in our school district at any time, for any reason, in any way, regardless of what history did to them – we need to have been treating everyone in our school district based on their need… We should have no historically underserved populations at the Gunnison Watershed School District.”

“You and I agree,” said Nichols. “It is a fact that these disaggregated groups of students have scored dramatically lower in achievement, and in many cases growth, than our entire student body as a whole. It is something we need to pay attention to. Can I say with 100% confidence that the Gunnison Watershed School District has not underserved these populations, I cannot. That is why I am putting our attention and focus on that in this year’s UIP to say what’s going on with these persistent lower achieving and growth scores. I’m very concerned.”

“This is kind of where we get into an equity conversation. The fact that somebody is scoring less does not mean that they are underserved,” said Taylor. “For me, equity and equality have always been the same thing…Let’s just get equity and equality out of the equation, we need to be fair with every student in the school district… We should aspire to raising the floor and raising the ceiling for our students, recognizing that there will always be a floor and there will always be a ceiling…If the Gunnison Watershed School District is underserving a population that has been historically underserved in history, shame on us, end of story.”

“I’d like the data for these students. I don’t believe that we’re giving them as much as we can,” said board member Mandy Roberts. “I think the social emotional/learning is a lot. I am concerned, we are letting them down. We’re spending money on counseling. I’m sorry, when I was a kid, I had issues in my family but my family took me to a counselor, they didn’t have one in the school,” she said. “The number one priority is academic achievement improvement, that’s what needs to happen and it’s not happening. If we truly love these children, we need to give them what we need, they’re here for school…I think we need to pay attention to what direction we’re leading the children…We need to get back to reading, writing and arithmetic and get focused on that. Our parents should be the ones to take care of anything else.”

She continued, “We have this bond, we need the money to fix this school. Well, let’s stop spending money and let the parents help their children and let’s get the school fixed. Let’s stop cramming down the kid’s throats the social/emotional learning. I don’t think that’s ok. I love the kids, they need the help but parents have to help them too. We have mentor programs, we have other programs outside this school. We need to remember schools are for teaching the children and I think we need to get back to that.”

Board member Anne Brookhart disagreed. “I just don’t understand that you think a public school can function when there are children who are suffering and don’t have the resources they need at home to deal with those issues, and so I disagree and I think it’s very important that we teach social and emotional learning,” said Brookhart. 

“I do care about the children in this valley, but we need to remember the parents need to get involved and help them out,” said Roberts. 

“Some children don’t have parents there for them,” replied Brookhart. 

“The teachers are there to teach and I think we’re forgetting that,” said Roberts. “I do care, that’s why I‘m here.”

Nichols jumped in, “Mandy, you and I agree about reading and writing and arithmetic as being priorities for our schools. And we also know that when kids show up and they didn’t have breakfast or they didn’t bring a lunch they’re not going to be able to learn and that’s why we have the federal lunch meals program. Similarly, we also know if a kiddo shows up and they get around in a wheelchair and we don’t have an elevator to get them to their class on the second floor, we’re not serving that kid appropriately and so we need to be sure we’re feeding the kids and have facilities that meet all of our kids’ needs. And sometimes the needs aren’t as obvious as food or a wheelchair ramp and we have to be sure we’re meeting those needs too, so kids are ready to learn. So, it’s complicated…Turns out that education is rocket science and it takes a whole lot to be sure we can bring our kids as far as possible in their learning.”

Sierra Cucinelli, a 6th grade English teacher at Gunnison Middle School, spoke during public comment. “As a teacher, the hardest part of my job is honestly the social and emotional learning components. If a student is de-regulated it’s not only harder for that student to learn, it’s harder for the entire classroom to learn and the counselors make the biggest difference in the student’s day. Therefore, they make the biggest difference in my day. I could not do my job without the counselors. I think we need more of them,” she said, noting that the mental health resources in the community are not always easily available to all. 

“To me I think it merits coming back and putting this on the agenda again after we’ve had a chance to look at it,” said board president Tyler Martineau. “I think Dave has really raised a good point about what does underserved mean and are we underserving. I would like to discuss that more and see if we as a board can come up with a definition of what that means and are we underserving and what we’re going to do. I think we all are committed to academics and so that sort of raises the question of should a school be only academics. What level of emotional wellbeing is appropriate in a school district, and Anne’s raised a different view about that. To me that’s a national issue right now and since Mandy has raised it, I think it’s appropriate for us to talk about it at some point.”

The board agreed to continue reviewing the UIP and related discussions.