We believe strongly that you will not find a faculty more committed to the PLC philosophy than the one at Bayside High School. We have been working for many years to develop a culture where adults hold each other accountable to institute effective instructional strategies and create common formative assessments, and we have made exceptional progress. Not only do we work together in our formal weekly meetings to develop lessons and assessments based on our school objectives, but because our culture of collaboration is so deeply embedded here, we often meet much more often in informal settings. We also practice a Peer Coaching Model to enhance professional development; we currently have five trained peer mentors. This model helps to increase trust and respect amongst the faculty and results in a systematic method of feedback and continuous instructional improvement. 

Our Journey

2009-2010

As a faculty, we study professional literature as support to achieve our goals. During the 2009-2010 school year, under the guidance of our principal, we studied Marzano, Pickering and Pollack's (2001) Classroom Instruction that Works, and conducted two full-day building level workshops on Professional Learning Communities. In addition, eight one-hour workshops were conducted throughout the course of the year as department level teams collaborated on further study of the strategies in Marzano’s book. These teams then developed monthly presentations for the rest of the faculty in order to share what they learned. This year also began the implementation of our principal’s vision of teachers observing and learning from one another. This first year, teachers gave positive feedback to one another based on lessons they observed at least twice during the school year. This was a brand new concept for most of the faculty members, and, while many were at first resistant, our principal realized it was important not to try to wait for 100% buy-in but to begin to create a common belief system that would eventually turn the tide. To celebrate these achievements, teachers sent notes of encouragement to one another. It was at this point that teacher leaders created collaborative teams with those who taught the same subjects to begin implementing PLC concepts. At the end of that year, teachers were surveyed and indicated a desire to continue the study and application of Marzano's effective teaching strategies, and a desire for heightened participation in collaborative teams. 

2010-2011

In response, additional professional development was provided by the principal in 2010-2011 based on DuFour's (2006) definitions of what PLCs are and are not. The text Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work (DuFour 2006) became the focus of continued professional development to assist us in achieving our objective. During this school year, all teachers participated in at least one team in which they developed multiple common formative assessments and worked together to answer these Essential Questions:

• What do we want our students to learn?
• How will we know when they have learned it?
• How will we respond when some students don’t learn?

As a means to better implement our team commitments, our media specialist (also our professional development coordinator) held one hour weekly professional development sessions to assist in areas such as development of relationships and building trust in small groups, establishment of norms/protocols to guide meetings and deal with conflict, creation of agendas, identification of essential curriculum, and development/implementation of SMART goals. Another change this year was in the function of our monthly whole group meetings. The old “faculty meetings” whereby we simply went over routine business (now handled through email) have been transformed into opportunities to celebrate teacher and team effectiveness and to learn from one another. The principal and professional development coordinator sought out the highest performing groups to share their journey to model, discuss, and celebrate their successes. They shared specific strategies during our whole group meetings to provide other teams and teachers with ideas to implement.

2011-2012

We continued our growth as a PLC in the 2011-2012 school year as we engaged in intervention development for the lowest performing 25% of our student population. Together, we shared strategies gleaned from both internal and external sources to improve their performance. Our data reflects our unprecedented success in this area. A huge task was before us this school year as our district introduced a new evaluation system, which was completely beyond the scope of anything we had seen in the past. In true Bayside High School PLC practice, we tackled the understanding of this complex new system as a collaborative team. Our principal designated each department-level team with the task of becoming the expert in one of the dimensions of the new evaluation system and then with the further task of teaching the dimension to the rest of the faculty during our whole group meetings. These informative presentations could have been done in boring stand and deliver, “death by power point” presentations, but we took our jobs very seriously and wanted the rest of our PLC to truly understand each dimension. Teams created video performances, Prezis, jigsaw readings, etc. One group even involved the students in creating a sample dramatic performance. By the end of this school year, every faculty member of BHS had stood in front of the entire faculty either as an individual or part of a team to share best practices. Our principal celebrated his admiration of these presentations by sharing them with district level administrators. This process empowered the teachers at BHS and made them much more comfortable with the new system.

In addition, the new evaluation system provided district support to our practice of observing and learning from one another. It is now mandatory that every teacher attempting to earn highly distinguished status be observed by at least three colleagues who will then provide corrective feedback based on the observation. This constructive feedback goes a step beyond what we had been doing at BHS, since teachers must incorporate changes in their classroom practices based on the advice received from their teammates. These changes must then also be shared with evaluating administrators. The teachers at BHS were not as resistant to these new criteria since we had been participating in voluntary observations for years before this; however, these new requirements do validate our belief in the importance of learning from one another.

2012-2013

During the 2012-2013 school year, we began to tackle another challenge. Our population of students on free and reduced lunch reflects a unique need at Bayside High School. Whereas other schools may look to this number as an excuse for poor performance, we at Bayside see this as a challenge that we must meet. Many of our students come to us from discouraging and often heartbreaking circumstances. Our collective inquiry into this issue led us to develop an action research plan. To meet their needs, we must look for ways to help them learn in spite of their circumstances. This year, we developed an additional team around the study of the book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (Tough 2012). Through our Edmodo page and during our collaborative meetings, we engaged in ongoing discussions about the ideas and strategies in this book and how they will help us reach our students at Bayside. We have even broadened our Bayside PLC in the study of the ideas in this book by inviting feeder schools as well as district leaders and community members, including our mayor, to join us. A recent breakfast discussion group revealed just how much this book has affected the readers; one teacher, who is also a coach, realized that his strong coaching skills needed to be put to use in the classroom. As a teacher, it had not occurred to him the value of teaching students how to bounce back from failure, a skill that he clearly understood the need for in his coaching role. We believe the interventions inspired by the study of the ideas and strategies in this professional literature assisted us in reaching our disadvantaged students in their current reality. We are confident that the achievement data will reflect our continued effort and dedication to our goal that ALL of Bayside’s students learn the essential skills, knowledge, and characteristics to be successful in their post high school lives.

2013-2014

In the 2013-2014 school year, Bayside’s leadership changed but our focus and commitment to our PLC did not.  In fact, our new principal has found even more ways to strengthen our collaborative culture.  Starting with a renewed focus on our previous work with Learning by Doing (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker & Many, 2010) our faculty revisited the foundation of what professional learning communities are and are not, spent time reading and reviewing research generating a renewed buy-in for past faculty members and grounding for new ones, and began the work of recrafting our mission statement.  We continued our collaborative work, restructuring our PLC team into four main subdivisions:  whole faculty, departmental, horizontal teams and collaborative teams.

• Whole faculty teams come together to maintain our focus on our priorities in a variety of different ways including:
  • shared readings
  • discussing and questioning past practices
  • problem-solving activities
  • consensus building
  • celebration
• Department teams may include singular subject departments (math, science), multi-department subjects (electives, ESE) and academies such as Encore (Fine and Technical Arts Academy) and BETA (Bayside Engineering Technology Academy).  These teams also have dedicated time set aside by our principal in which they collaborate on areas such as instructional strategies and issues that are unique to the efficient functioning of each department.
• Horizontal Teams are subject specific teams that meet bi-monthly to address curriculum, data, teaching strategies and common assessments.
• Collaboration and Mutual Accountability teams meet at their discretion during early release Wednesdays.  These teams are self-directed and focus on a group of students for individual intervention.  This could include our students at the bottom quartile as well as our students who would be successful in more rigorous classes with more school-wide support.

During the 2013 school year, we began to implement the Peer Coaching Model to collaborate with colleagues.  Five members of the faculty attended a district in-service and brought the model back to the faculty and presented the purpose and process to our faculty.  This gave us a more systematic way to provide requested feedback.  Teachers identify an area of professional growth, have a pre-conference addressing concerns, conduct the lesson under observation, and then have a follow-up conference with their peer to determine strategies for improvement.  The willingness to be observed by peers demonstrates the trust and respect our faculty members have for one another.  This success is one to truly celebrate as it highlights how far our PLC has come since we began this journey many years ago.  Momentum has shifted and it is now a non-negotiable fact that we are a collaborative culture that values what we learn from one another.  Teachers are not feeling “forced” to participate in something that’s being done to them, but instead are excited about the possibility of job-embedded professional development.  In fact, willingness to participate in collaboration is part of the selection criteria used when our principal chooses new teachers.  Many of our recent hires have become leaders in our small groups.

2014-2015

Continuing our work from the 2013-2014 school year, our faculty continued with our PLC questions:

What do we want our students to learn?

How will we know when they learned it?

How will we respond when some students don’t learn?

To address the first two questions, we realized we needed to become more deliberate about how we function as a team.  As a whole faculty, we began the year with two big ideas – how to ensure a guaranteed curriculum and how we can commit to one another and our students to act in accordance to our mission.  The faculty was introduced to backwards lesson design and curriculum mapping as we began to tackle ensuring Bayside had a guaranteed curriculum across all subject areas and all teachers.  Each department and horizontal team was given the training, tools and time to begin the process with an in-service during pre-planning and a full day of planning time in the beginning of the year to begin creating their maps, which included common timelines, priority standards, transfer goals, KWLs and performance tasks or assessments.  At the conclusion of our first planning day, the teams found it so valuable that time was scheduled each quarter for teachers to get together during work hours to spend at least a half day collaborating on curriculum mapping.  Each planning session developed stronger, more focused maps and stronger, more focused teams.  This planning day has become so important to teams that it is now a calendar priority for each school year.  Additionally, we began our work on collective commitments.  We looked at them in two ways: the commitments we make to our students and those we make to one another as peers and professionals.  Throughout the 2014 school year, we worked on building consensus and refining the list of six commitments we now have posted and which guide our actions with our students.  These include:

• To always demonstrate to our students trustworthiness and accountability.
• To build positive relationships with all of our students to foster self-confidence and independence.
• To maintain high personal expectations for learning, behavior and citizenship for all of our students.
• To keep our students informed of our expectations and engaged in their learning.
• To provide all of our students with the same opportunities for learning.
• To create a welcoming community that nurtures the emotional, physical and social needs of all of our students. 

We consider both our students and parents to be part of Bayside’s PLC.  In terms of parent involvement, our client surveys indicated a desire for informative sessions directed at parents in areas of homework assistance, student on-line classes, career preparation/information, in addition to those already provided concerning college readiness/information and ACT/SAT preparation.  The survey also indicated a need for strengthening 21^st century skills involving goal setting, planning and organization.  All research in this area concurs that a strong bond between school and home positively affects student achievement.  Each school year, the Bayside University, our evening information sessions for parents, adds to its curriculum to include areas indicated in our surveys as needs of our community.  Our students are also  respected and valued members of our PLC.  In line with current research, which indicates that students who set goals and take responsibility for their learning show greater achievement than those who do not, many of our efforts are focused on helping our student take responsibility for their own learning and academic success.  In late 2014 (prior to the 14/15 school year), our faculty read an article about Power Hour, a program that restructures school hours to allow students time during the school day to work together in teams, seek additional tutoring both from teachers and peers, work on homework, and become active in clubs or build positive relationships.  A team of teachers made the visit to a school implementing Power Hour in another school district and immediately knew it was the missing piece for Bayside.  The team came back and presented their findings to the entire faculty and the process began.  Working through the faculty meetings, we began to build consensus about how Power Hour would look at Bayside and generating student and parent buy-in.  We believed so strongly in how this hour could solidify our school culture and provide more opportunities to our students that our principal campaigned diligently to our district leaders to briefly extend our school day, reduce time between classes and even redesign areas of our campus for student use.  This unique program, implemented in the 2014 – 2015 school year, gives each student the power to take charge of his/her own education.  One student wrote back after the conclusion of the year, “…Power Hour prepared me to accept responsibility for my time, which prepared me for my first year of college as much as taking AP courses.”

2015-2016

During the 2015-2016 school year, Bayside acknowledged the need to become more systemic in how we approach the final question of a PLC school:

• How will we respond when some of our students don’t learn?

We continued our work to provide a guaranteed curriculum, using curriculum mapping and common formative and summative assessments through valuable quarterly planning days, but added a three-tiered approach to addressing our final PLC question.  The first tier was already in place but needed to grow.  Our Multi-tiered System of Support (MTSS) process focused on the needs of kids once they had fallen into a deep hole or were in crisis, so we added a mentoring program which began to address issues while they were still very much within our students’ control.  Any student failing a class is assigned a mentor who meets with them every other week to work on time management, study skills, recording grades and setting goals.  A Bayside Power Hour Planner was developed for this purpose.  Each student received a planner that provides space to plan out the week but also provides space for weekly grade tracking.  Although this work is time consuming and there are more students in need than mentors available, we have found that roughly half of the students we work with are able to turn their grades completely around and are learning those valuable soft skills necessary for career and college readiness. 

The second tier involved the addition of more student support personnel – an academic interventionist whose sole responsibility it is to make sure we remain on mission, track the academic progress of our students, ensure mentors are meeting with students and help problem solve issues that arise. We also were able to add a social worker who works to move students out of crisis as quickly as possible by surrounding them with the support they need so that their focus can remain on their academic success. 

Finally, the last tier is creating Instructional Data Teams (IDT).  This has been a new process to our faculty and we have progressed through the year slowly, but with focused intention.  A targeted group of horizontal teams have spent the first semester this year learning the process of IDTs and have begun the hard work of collaborating around student data to answer the question – how do we respond when some of our students don’t learn?  By years end, our targeted horizontal teams will have worked through the IDT process and will be ready to take the lead with the whole faculty in the 2016/17 school year. 

We have also continued our work with collective commitments, beginning the process to build consensus around our commitments to one another.  We started the year by answering the question as a faculty “What is our why?”  Our principal maintains the focus on our ‘why’ by beginning each day with a positive announcement always ending with, “That’s just what we do.  We’re Bayside.”  This phrase can be heard repeated by students around campus.  Our principal is dedicated to reinforcing our mission of fostering within our students the academic passion, purpose and perseverance (the grit!) to be successful in the college and/or career of their choosing.  

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Bayside teachers meet in small groups on a weekly basis. The dedicated time for these meetings is during the teacher’s workday. These groups consist of teachers who teach the same curriculum and/or grade level. All of our teachers are participating members. We have found that a key to the success of these meetings is having a group of school leaders who keep the focus on professional learning and instruction. Every member is expected to participate equally in achieving the team goals. In these weekly meetings, the teachers:

• Define core curriculum
• Develop SMART goals in line with School Improvement Objectives
• Develop common assessments (both formative and summative). Teams have studied the State Standards and regularly create assessments that align the standards with our School Improvement Objectives. Our teams have committed to not only creating these assessments together but also to using the Peer Coaching Model in the implementation of these assessments, inviting their colleagues and/or administrators in to observe the teaching of these lessons to elicit feedback.
• Review and analyze results from common assessments. We know that student learning is improved when we learn from each other, so these common assessment results are then used by the teachers to determine what the teachers themselves need help with in order to reach the students who are not successful. During their follow-up meetings, teachers work with one another to build on strengths and help with weaknesses, sharing suggestions and (in line with the Peer Coaching Model) helping teachers find professional literature and other materials that will help to reach their own professional growth goals. This ensures that at Bayside we are not teacher-centered or curriculum-centered, but instead we are learning-centered.
• Determine ways to reach students who do not show evidence of learning. Teachers decide what methods they will use to re-teach or review material that was not learned. This systematic process makes a real impact on our students since the ideas shared through collaboration provide the teachers who need assistance with the job-embedded professional development that they need to reach every student.
• Determine ways to enrich the learning of students who do show evidence of learning. In addition to enrichment, teachers also develop ways to reward the students (such as display of exemplary work or opportunities to move on to a more challenging skill or topic) who exhibit mastery of the material.

In addition to these groups, each teacher is also a participating member of a self-selected collaborative team. These teams have a goal of collaboration and mutual accountability.  Teachers choose their teams based on shared students, connected curriculum, horizontal teams, or professional development goals.  In their regular meetings they conduct the following:

• Review of the students’ current grades
• Development of a plan of intervention if a student is not showing success in an academic area
• Prioritizing standards
• Unit planning

Additional progress monitoring is done through interim grades which are sent home to parents every 4 ½ weeks. Report cards are sent home every 9 weeks. Teachers use the online grade reporting software of Edline to communicate with parents and students. Teachers post grades at least once a week.

Teachers regularly administer assessments such as FAIR (Florida Assessment in Reading) and DRAs (District Required Assessments). The results of these assessments are discussed in the weekly meetings and help to guide the teachers in their instruction. Teachers are able to determine what areas of weakness need to be addressed. These results also show teachers which students are mastering the areas assessed and how to continue to meet their needs as well.

While we do value the results of these formal summative assessments, we also use the results of collaborative teacher-made formative assessments to drive our decision making.  In addition to district and state assessments, our teachers across all disciplines develop common formative and summative assessments in their teams to use on a regular basis. Results of these assessments are regularly shared with parents and students to determine how everyone can work together to continuously achieve success.

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

Bayside High School students are directed to participate in a variety of extended learning programs. School day programs include Credit Retrieval Lab (computer assisted instruction/credit retrieval), and reading intervention classes for Level 1 and Level 2 students. During Power Hour, teachers open their classrooms for individual and group tutoring, club sponsors host meetings, and students fill the library to spend extra time on homework and studying.  Students who are struggling academically receive Power Hour passes from their teachers directing them to attend sessions for extra help and/or make-up of missing work.  All of our teachers, staff, and students have embraced the value of this hour during the school day and acknowledge how our students who were unable to attend clubs or tutoring before or after school now have the opportunity to be much more active participants in their school experience.  At the close of our first semester, we had 139 more courses passed than the previous year, and there were 279 more courses passed in the second semester.  We attribute this in large part to the academic support offered during Power Hour.

 Accelerated educational options include Collegiate High School, Dual Enrollment, and Advanced Placement courses.

 Other programs include: Mu Alpha Theta math team, athletic academic tutoring, JROTC curriculum enhancement, Adult Education, and Florida Virtual School. In addition, opportunities exist for seniors who need credits for graduation. Adult education, Florida Virtual School, and Credit Retrieval Lab (a place where students go to work on course recovery after being unsuccessful) enable students to meet graduation credit requirements.   During the 2015-2016 school year, we added a student generated peer-to-peer tutoring program called Bear Smarts.  The funding for Bear Smarts is provided by a grant that was written and submitted by one of our students. 

 Our Response to Intervention team looks at data from the four domains of learning [instruction, curriculum, environment, learner] to identify tier 1, 2, and 3 interventions to support student learning. For example, one team member quarterly tracks grades earned by the entire student population to identify instructional trends that need administrative intervention.  Another counselor uses the Early Warning System (EWS) to monitor all ninth graders so that appropriate interventions can be implemented. For specific individual student needs identified by staff or parents, the student’s counselor facilitates the individual problem-solving team process by conducting conferences, guiding staff in implementing interventions, tracking progress and analyzing data, and working with the parent and student.

 Enrichment opportunities are available in the academic arena through clubs such as National Honor Society, Math Team, Academic Team, SECME, Rocket Club, Robotics Club, Poetry Alive, Speech and Debate, Ocean Bowl, the BHS Book Club, FBLA, Culinary Arts, TSA, JROTC, FPS, and FEA. Remediation for Reading and Math is provided through SOAR during summer school.

 Our freshmen and sophomore population of students scoring in the lowest 25 percentile are assigned to a group of teachers that we call the BEST team. BEST 9 and 10 is a dropout prevention program with a targeted system of multifaceted interventions incorporated into the school day.  The BEST program includes a team teaching approach, teamed student data chats, college field trips, and motivational activities. These teachers are a high functioning collaborative group who meet regularly (sometimes daily) to address the needs of their unique population.  These teachers receive special training to assist them in providing appropriate instruction to their clientele.

 Bayside High School also offers two choice programs, BETA and ENCORE that draw approximately 298 students from middle schools in the area.

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

Bayside High School believes in the value of a professional learning community, and under the guidance of our previous and current dedicated principals, continues to build upon our success in this area. In fact, our former principal and a teacher leader were selected to share the school’s success as a PLC at a district meeting. One of Bayside’s team’s sessions was filmed by district professional development leaders to be used for training during the district’s BEST (Brevard’s Effective Strategies for Teachers) professional development day. All personnel across the district of 95 schools watched this video to provide a model for an effective collaborative team session. Another team at Bayside created a presentation of a short film to illustrate the process for observations and providing corrective feedback. A link to that film was placed on the district website to assist teachers at other schools as they began this collaborative process across the district. During the 2015-2016 school year, a group of three Bayside teachers presented our journey to a school-wide transformation at the annual ECET2 (Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teaching and Teachers) convening.  Their presentation was called “The Holy Grail of Teaching-Putting the Pieces Together: the Search and Discovery of your WHY.”  You can see that Bayside is a model PLC in our district, the tenth largest of 67 districts in Florida, serving approximately 73,000 students.

 During faculty meetings and Professional Development Days, teams share successful strategies with the whole group. Our principal knows the value of dedicated teacher collaboration time, and provides time in our schedule for our weekly meetings. The culture at Bayside has truly become one where it is simply unacceptable not to participate in regular collaboration. Our belief in the PLC philosophy is one that is self-sustaining.

 Our district-provided Professional Development Days center around meeting our School Improvement goals of Collective Commitments, Guaranteed Curriculum, Quality Instructional Strategies, and Individual Student Support.  At other schools, these goals may just be platitudes placed on the district-required School Improvement Plan with no real connection to day-to-day practices. At Bayside, you could stop any of our teachers to ask them our Mission, Vision, and Goals, and find through their quick response that these are philosophies and objectives that guide us in our daily instruction and planning. In fact, the development of these statements was a collaborative process as we came together to develop a consensus and create a mission and collective commitments that were truly reflective of our beliefs and goals.

 During the 2015-2016 school year, Bayside began the study of the book Mindset by Carol Dweck.  Our principal purchased a copy for each member of the faculty to read and discuss during our monthly professional development meetings. As we continue to look for ways to motivate our underachieving students as well as reduce the achievement gap in our underrepresented populations, we are looking to the psychology of growth and fixed mindset to help guide us.  As we delve deep into the research behind Mindset, our PLC is developing even more of a common vocabulary to use with our students.  As part of our commitment to being a true PLC, teachers provide feedback after our professional development to study what is working, what needs to be improved, and to use the method of continuous improvement cycle to develop strategies to meet the needs of our students.  After our first Mindset PD, the overwhelming positive feedback from the faculty let us know we were on the right track. 

 Our efforts as a PLC are consistently recognized during our whole group meetings as we share our successes and celebrate our achievements.  Our current principal is such a strong believer in coming together in ways that connect us to one another that she revived a near non-existent social committee to put together events and celebrations to honor and recognize the hard work of our PLC.  These events are held at least monthly.

 

Additional Achievement Data

 

	% Proficient in FCAT/FSA Reading (9th)	% Proficient in FCAT/FSA Reading (10th)	% Proficient in Biology EOC	% Proficient in Algebra 1 EOC	% Proficient in Geometry EOC	% Proficient in US History EOC	Free/reduced Lunch
2012-2013	55%	65%	65%	59%	68%	66%	43.7%
2013-2014	67%	63%	81%	67%	60%	56%	46.4%
2014-2015	N/A	*FSA: 60%	69%	72%	N/A	68%	50.8%
State	12/13: 53% 13/14: 53%	12/13: 53% 13/14: 55%	12/13: 54% 13/14: 58% 14/15: 55%	12/13: 46% 13/14: 55% 14/15: N/A	12/13: 51% 13/14: 54% 14/15: N/A	12/13: 59% 13/14: 55% 14/15: 52%

During the 2014-2015 school year, the state of Florida Department of Education changed the computer base testing eliminating FCAT 2.0 and implementing the new FSA ELA.  Additionally the platform for the FSA Algebra-1, Geometry, and adding Algebra II EOC’s was changed to include two 90 minute sessions.  Due to the changes in the testing platforms, no comparable data exists for grades 9 and 10.       

In lieu of baseline data from FSA assessments, Bayside High School reviewed their existing data picture as a means to address strengths of in areas of need.  Positive trends were noted, including a decline in the percentage of failing grades as demonstrated by proficiency in 279 more courses in the previous year and 139 courses passed by greater than 1 grade.  The percent of daily attendance rose from 94.51% to 95.52%, meeting the district goal of 95% or better.  Improvements were made in the proficiency levels on the Algebra 1 EOC by 5% and on the U.S. History EOC by 12%.  However, Biology EOC proficiency levels dropped 12%.  The decision was made to add in a regular Biology/Chemistry/Physics sequence (in addition to the honors) when it became apparent both through conversation with stakeholders and data, that while students wanted the traditional sequence some were not prepared, in the long run, to pass Biology/Chemistry/Physics honors.  Offering the additional track provided our students the opportunity to master the course standards, but did increase our 9^th grade Biology EOC tested population by over 200 students.  It is important to note, even with the additional 9^th grade testers 2014-2015 scores were still 3% higher than 2012-2013 scores testing only Biology honors and Integrated III science students.  Once again, reviewing the document “The Toolbox Revisited” put out by the Department of Education which addresses the research of the positive impact high school course offerings has on college completion, we are not satisfied with our current data.  The gap between majority and minority, as well as the gap in boys to girls in meeting the indicators for college completion is an area of concern.  During the 2015-2016 school year, a team of teachers has been working on defining our obstacles and creating an action plan to address college readiness for all students.  The work of this group will assist us in addressing the fourth question of, “How will we extend and enrich the learning for students who are already proficient?” during the 2016-2017 school year. 

Some areas that Bayside High School has been improving on in the past three years are the continued increase in our attendance rates, the decrease in percentage of failing grades due to our interventions from Power Hour, increased Algebra 1 and U.S. History EOC scores, and a decrease of over 400 dean’s referrals and 25% reduction in the number of students suspended in the last school year. Bayside High School maintains a focus on continual improvement by constantly analyzing available data from items such as surveys, graduation outcome results, standardized testing data, and other student achievement results. 

In the past three years, Bayside has been recognized by the following awards:

• Harris and Florida Workforce Grant-$60, 000 (shared)
• Northrup Grumman $500 Innovation Challenge Grant: Students had to build a remote controlled airship from scratch including designing and building a balloon, that had to travel through a multi-level obstacle course.
• Northrup Innovation Challenge- Students won most spirited and 2nd place overall ($1,000 award to continue innovations)
• Exxon Mobile grant
• Highest number in the county of AP Test Scorers who work for ETS/College Board 
• Bayside’s Culinary teacher won ProStart Chef Instructor of the Year for the State of Florida.
• Bayside has had 4 AP teachers attend the College Board AP exams scoring (different subject areas). No other high school in the district has that many teachers who score the exams each year.  This helps us gain more insight into what the readers are looking for and how best to transfer that knowledge to our students. If the students know how the essays are scored (what the AP Board is looking for) they are better able to address the essay questions.
• 3 United Launch Alliance Grants providing extra money for purchasing organisms for dissection.  
• Grant for $1000 to purchase classroom use iPads.
• Science Fair winners have earned as much as $60,000  in Florida Tech Scholarships
• AutoDesk AutoCad Certification Passers are in the top 5% in Brevard County (100%)
• SolidWorks Certification Passers are in the top 5% in Brevard County (88.5% for past two years)
• Bayside has been a gold banner winner for the Students In Action Competition for three years in a row.  Bayside High tracked over 28,552 service hours with a financial impact of over $656,000 dollars to the community.
• Bayside won the Students In Action competition for Jefferson Awards Foundation.  Our students and sponsor went to Washington, D.C., in June, 2014 to the gala event.
• Students selected for All-County and All-State Bands and Orchestras, Tri-State Bands, and All-National Honor Orchestra.
• Superior Ratings at state level Solo and Ensemble Festival for band
• The NJROTC Program at Bayside has continued to be a “Distinguished Unit” top 30 % nationwide now for 14 consecutive years.  Our NJROTC competitive teams consistently qualify for the State championships now for 16 consecutive years.
• In 2015, 251 students took 417 AP exams and 56% received a 3 or higher on these exams, the state of Florida percentage is 50%. 
• Brevard County Schools offers an AP Diploma for students taking and passing 6 credits of Advanced Placement, in a minimum of 3 subject areas and passing their AP Exams with a 3 or higher.  Bayside had 21 seniors earning this distinction in 2015.
• Twenty-five seniors earned an Associate of Arts degree from Eastern Florida State College in May of 2015. 
• In 2015,  Bayside won the Digital Classroom Plan award through a highly selective process in which we will receive:
• Ten mobile computer labs with 300 student devices
• Improvements to our wireless network infrastructure in order to fully support digital teaching and learning as well as the administration of computer-based assessments.
• On-going Professional Development, informed by the Technology Integration Matrix, to advance the skills, practice and understanding of teachers and administrators.