Longfellow Elementary (2023)
School Information
- School District: Bozeman School District
- School Address: 404 W. Main , BOZEMAN, MT 59715, US
- School Phone: 4065226150
- Principal: Laura Conwell
- Contact E-Mail: laura.conwell@bsd7.org
Demographics
- Number of Students: 299
- Percent Eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch: 7%
- Percent of Limited English Proficient: 1%
- Percent of Special Education: 12%
Racial/Ethnic Percentages:
- White: 89.8%
- Black: 1.5%
- Hispanic: 3.7%
- Asian: 0.5%
- Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: 0%
- American Indian or Alaska Native: 0.5%
- Multiracial: 4%
- Other: 0%
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During the summer of 2021 K-5 certified staff members were provided a stipend to read the Learning By Doing Book which helped to provide a consistent framework for understanding the PLC process. Additionally a course was built within the learning management system of the District as a tool for sites to use as they worked through the various components of laying a foundation for the PLC at Work process. 90 min. Collaborative Time (45 min. X 2) ELA Core 90 min. + Walk To 30-45 min. Math Core 60 min. + Walk To 30-45 min. ELA/Math Tier III |
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Tell us how you are facilitating a culture of continuous improvement in your school or district. (250-500 words) Early Literacy Goal: By 2025, 85% of all children entering Kindergarten will have requisite literacy skills as measured by Acadience. Grade Level Reading Goal: By 2025, 90% of all BSD7 3rd Grade Students will demonstrate grade-level reading skills by achieving a proficient score on the Acadience reading assessment at the end of the school year. PLC Goal: By spring of 2025 all BSD7 schools PK-12 will have fully implemented PLC’s in place that will support the closing of the achievement gap, thus qualifying BSD7 as a Solution Tree Model PLC District. Graduation Goal: By 2025, 95% of BSD7 students in each graduation cohort will earn a regular high school diploma in four years or fewer. Our school goals directly tie to our Bozeman School District goals, we see them as the stepping stone to meeting our overall district goals. Each goal is directly tied to our district assesment tools: Acadience, STAR, and Dessa. Under each goal our team at Longfellow has created an action plan to specifically address the MTSS and PLC structure as the foundation for addressing the goals. Longfellow Elementary School Measurable Goals Grade Level Reading Goal: In each grade level,90% of students will reach a reading composite score of at benchmark or above benchmark on the Spring Acadience assessment. MTSS Action Plan Tier I: Grades K-2:
Grades 3-5:
All Grades Walk to Read opportunities during a 40-minute MTSS block for targeted differentiation Tier II: All Grades are implementing a Walk to Read (MTSS) model that will include the opportunity to:
Additional Resources:
Tier III: All grades
PLC Action Plan
Vertical PLCs meet monthly
Grade Level Math Goal: In each grade level (2-5),90% of students will score at benchmark or above on the STAR Math Spring Benchmark.
Tier I: Grades K-1:
Grades 2-5:
All Grades
Tier II: Master Schedule provides protected and consistent 1) Core, 2) MTSS/Intervention/Enrichment time
Tier III: All grades
PLC's PLCs ensure the following systems are in place:
Vertical PLCs - Monthly K-2 & 3-5 instructional conversations occur, including specialists/intervention team members Social/Emotional Learning Goal: Support our students in the “need” category and others we have identified through different measures especially in the area of executive functions. Tier I:
Tier II:
Tier III:
PLC SEL Team meetings weekly: School counselor, Thrive Liaison, School Psychologist, Principal. Address new and existing concerns and create support plans. Plan and review schoolwide positive behavior programs & student assemblies. Home to School input and connection. MTSS Team
Executive Functioning Book Club
Leadership Team
Graduation Rate/Attendance Goal: Our team is partnering with the family to create a student action plan to address chronic absence. Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
The LRSP action plans are formally discussed three times a year with District administration. In addition the Board of Trustees does an annual luncheon to see first-hand what implementation looks like in each building. Action plans are made available to the public and housed on the District website for transparency and accountability. |
1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.
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Describe the process that your school (district) uses to create and implement a guaranteed and viable curriculum. (Recommended word count is 150–500.) You may want to include information on the following……. Board Policy/Curriculum Improvement Matrix/Priority Standards The District utilizes Policy 2120 – Curriculum and Assessment to guide curriculum adoption, selection of instructional resources to support the educational program, and the assessment of the progress of all students in achieving content standards and content-specific grade-level learning progressions in each content area. This work is completed on a schedule mandated by the state of Montana. Other policies associated with this work are 2131 – Bozeman Comprehensive Assessment System, 2311 – Instructional Materials
A motto used in the Bozeman Public Schools is “All means all.” In order to implement a guaranteed curriculum, all stakeholders must understand the essential content that all students need to know, understand and be able to do. Thus, the District utilizes a transparent standard operating procedure for curriculum adoption/revision/continuous improvement while providing meaningful professional development and support for research-based best practices in teaching. This is a cyclical process that standards review and adoption based on research, vertical and horizontal alignment, primary/core resource alignment, assessment alignment, implementation with fidelity, monitoring and feedback, and data review. Fundamental to each aspect of this process is the ongoing support provided by central office/curriculum office/school leadership, which includes professional development for administrators, site-level capacity building, professional development for educators, and professional learning for stakeholders.
Consistent understanding the essential content by all instructional staff is critical. Working in committees and facilitated by the curriculum office, our teachers identify the most important parts of the curriculum that students must learn to prepare them for academic success in that subject. The District has completed significant work on priority standards in the past three years. BSD7 priority standards identify what students should know and be able to do by the end of the school year. All standards are used to guide instruction; however, priority standards guide teachers and focus student learning on critical concepts. Each standard also has a “proficiency descriptor” which explains, on a four-point rubric, what the student knows and is able to do for each proficiency level. The district provides then written guidance to instructional staff, including scope and sequence, priority standards and proficiency descriptors. At the school level, teachers work in teams to ensure this is implemented in the classroom. A viable curriculum means that teachers have adequate time to teach the content and that students have adequate time to learn the content. TOSAs As a school district we use Teachers On Special Assignment (TOSAs) to provide support in regards to curricular materials vetting, adoption, professional development, and implementation. Our team of TOSAs, in collaboration with our Deputy Superintendents have worked to guide three resource vetting committees to adopt core resource materials for K-5 math, K-2 Reading/ELA, and most recently 3-5 Reading/ELA. The vetting process includes: 1) reviewing the learning standards for each content area, 2) creating a rubric that aligns with our district’s mission, vision, and Long Range Strategic Plan to evaluate possible resources, and 3) providing multiple avenues for input from all levels of stakeholders. Once the vetting process is completed, the TOSAs work to prepare a recommendation to the Board of Trustees for formal adoption. Once a resource has been adopted, the TOSAs work to develop a plan for professional development and work with building leaders to determine the best way to evaluate the fidelity of implementation. They serve as instructional coaches to support our administrators to lead the work in their respective buildings. |
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Describe the strategies your school (district) uses to monitor student learning on a timely basis. (Recommended word count is 150–500.) Evidence of student learning is pivotal in a PLC culture and drives teacher, collaborative team, school site, and district wide decision making. Collaborative teacher teams come to agreement on common assessment tools and associated timelines for unpacking the given assessment. The District uses consistent benchmark assessment tools across the eight elementary schools for literacy and mathematics:
In addition to the benchmark and progress monitoring tools discussed above the linch pin of PLC work is team developed common assessments. Collaborative teams lean on the excellent in-program assessment tools within Bridges mathematics to pull together common formative and summative assessments that are given and then discussed during collaborative team meetings. Pre-assessments are also used to help inform potential areas of strength and likely student misconceptions prior to delivery of core instruction. Teacher teams are provided systematic data analysis tools/protocols to help unpack data from benchmark assessment periods. Those formal protocols are tweaked and modified by collaborative teacher teams to unpack data in a recurring cycle that helps ensure instruction is modified, and interventions and extensions are provided.
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2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.
IMPACT Schedule
As mentioned before, during the 2019-2020 school year all of our district’s elementary schools collaborated to develop and implement a common master schedule that provided consistent and dedicated time for our teams to engage in the work of PLCs. This work included the coordination of master schedules among all eight of our elementary schools in order to ensure appropriate and equitable learning opportunities for all of our students. This common master schedule allowed for designated times for core instruction as well as additional Tier II and Tier III supports during each school day to deliver multi-tiered levels of support.
Resource Mapping
Beginning in September 2022, the District began the process of resource mapping, i.e., engaging school teams, as well as central office, in a review of “what is” so that as a district, we can make thoughtful and intentional decisions about “what can be done” to meet identified needs. The resource mapping work is based on Leading Equity-Based MTSS for All Students by McCart and Miller (2019).
Resource mapping is being conducted in the following areas: personnel (to understand the human capabilities within our school and our system), facilities (to generate innovate ideas that maximize all available space), curriculum and instruction (to take stock of all of our curricular, instructional and other resources and supports for academic, behavioral and SEL), time allocations and requirements (to understand time factors that influence options for scheduling teaching and learning), and data sources (to understand the sources of data that help us make decisions related to improving outcomes), and additional resources (to make sure we don’t overlook hidden treasures that could help to support students).
Policy 3610
During the 2021-2022 school year the District underwent a community conversation process regarding equity that resulted in student success policy #3610. The policy collectively puts the District on the hook for high levels of student learning. The following bold commitments are made within the policy:
- Providing all students with access to resources, opportunities, supports and interventions to maximize the success of each student.
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Assuring that all BSD7 staff members, with deliberate effort, continue to examine and eliminate beliefs, policies, practices, and teaching that may perpetuate disparities in achievement.
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Raising the achievement of each student while eliminating any identified or perceived opportunity or achievement gaps.
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Filtering programs, initiatives, and budget supports to maximize student success.
In addition to policy #3610, the District adopted an associated decision making filter in Board procedure #3610 that filters decision making through three important lenses:
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Does intervention support directly help close identified achievement gaps?
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Does flexible service delivery for Speech/Language directly tie to established district goals?
3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.
IMPACT Schedule
In all 8 of our elementary buildings our grade-level teams and teams comprised of our specialist teachers meet to review student data, determine appropriate interventions and extensions, and evaluate the effectiveness of their instructional practices. Since all elementary master schedules have designated times for core instruction as well as additional Tier II and Tier III supports our collaborative teacher teams have a clear understanding of the timeframe they have during each school day to deliver multi-tiered levels of support. The master schedules can also be flexed per school to match the unique needs of a given site.
Learning By Doing
Bozeman Public Schools uses Learning By Doing as the core foundational resource to guide the work of the collaborative teacher teams and building level leadership teams. The District created an associated course on the District learning management system to help guide teams through the resource. Additionally, the District has pulled the continuum rubrics from each chapter in Learning by Doing into an online form that collaborative teacher teams use to show their progress and set goals for future areas of growth, the work is never done!
TOSAs
As mentioned previously, our school district uses TOSAs to provide support for implementing district-level initiatives at our buildings and in our classrooms. As a part of their work, our TOSA team will collaborate with teams of teachers and/or individual teachers to improve instructional practices as well as promote strategies that truly focus on student learning. The strategies our TOSAs focus on when working with teachers include (but are not limited to) effectively measuring response to interventions, scaffolding learning experiences, classroom discussions, and building on prior background/knowledge. All of these strategies focus on improving learning for students and have a higher than average effect size on student achievement according to John Hattie (Hattie effect size list - 256 Influences Related To Achievement, March 2018)
Achievement Data Files
Additional Achievement Data
Bozeman School District has two elementary school who have been named Model PLC schools.
Hawthorne Elementary
Emily Dickenson Elementary