Warsaw Community School Board receives an update from Jim LeMasters.

WARSAW — The Warsaw Summer School Program faces a few challenges ahead in the future after a few shocking revelations this summer but shows a lot of progress thus far. Warsaw School Board heard from WCS Summer Program Coordinator JoElla Smyth as she presented the 2017 summer school report to the board Tuesday, Oct. 17.

“We’ve worked really hard to make summer school not that punitive program … We want it to be something that you are happy you did,” explained Smyth.

With summer school looked at as a punishment, Warsaw is looking to change that. The program served 1,185 students this summer. Warsaw took steps to improve the outlook of summer school, starting with cutting two days of the sessions. Students attended summer school for 15 days in the summer with a two week break between sessions. From the high school, Warsaw students recovered or earned over 1,000 credits of classes.

“That has an impact on our master schedule, our students schedules,” explained Smyth. “It accelerates but also catches kids back up. We had students that came in and worked on two or three courses in our summer sessions so I really feel like our summer program is cost effect and helpful to the students.”

However, high school students were not the only ones showing improvements. Among the elementary schools, the program saw drastic growth — 70 percent or higher in every class — at every grade level up until fourth grade. The fourth through seventh grades showed minor improvements, showing an average growth of under 20 percent in reading and writing. The higher elementary grades however did find significant growth in math.

“Another thing we looked at this year was our fourth through seventh grade literacy program. I had some concerns about our literacy program,” said Smyth. “So we did some studies of that program … It does not look like Warsaw schools traditionally does.”

Struck by the oddity of this occurrence, Smyth began compiling data to figure out the cause of the around at least 50 percent drop in growth in the fourth through seventh grade literacy program.

Smyth soon discovered that the demographics quickly changed between early elementary and late elementary. The pre-kindergarten through third grade program saw 67.7 percent of its program filled by caucasian students while 26.5 percent were Hispanic, 2.3 percent African American and 3.5 percent being stated as other. Fourth through seventh grades saw a drastic shift with 52.3 percent of students being hispanic and 38.7 percent being caucasian with 7.6 percent being Multiracial and 1.4 percent African American.

“We discovered some things that we need to change,” stated Smyth. “We need to change some things about the program.”

“In our schools it was 20.7 percent, but in our summer school, it was 52.3 percent hispanic … It was striking to see the difference in the summer school program with those students,” said Warsaw Summer Program Intern Lindsey Brander.

While race may have an influence, it appears the more drastic effect was seen in the socioeconomic status. Among the younger elementary students, around 65 percent of students paid for their lunches while the program witnessed among its older students nearly 67 percent were receiving free lunches.

Smyth stated, “According to the U.S. Department of Education, schools are considered high-poverty if 75 percent of the students receive free or reduced lunches.”

With reduced lunches, the fourth through seventh grade students were at 79.8 percent, placing Warsaw well over the threshold for high poverty.

Smyth wants to begin addressing the school’s summer program to better customize it for the program’s demographics. According to Smyth, the best tools for success will be “staff professionals learning and development to learn instructional methods that meet the needs of minority and low-income students.” She further went on to explain the importance of “knowing your audience” and recognizing the changes needing to occur because its not a “traditional Warsaw school” as in the summer school program “flips it to an inner city school.”

In other news:

• Chief Analytics and Testing Coordinator Shelly Wilfong presented research on school start times, opening the discussion to look at changing the school start times.
• Jim LeMasters presented an update on Warsaw’s construction projects.
• Krista Polston presented the plan for the Lilly Endowment Counseling Initiative Implementation Grant, explaining training for the support staff, hiring a Social-Emotional Learning Coordinator and hiring Grace College graduate counseling interns.