A change in medical plans was discussed at the Ector County ISD Board of Trustees workshop.
Benefits Coordinator Eric Smith, an independent contractor, and Yolanda Gordon, director of benefits and risk management with the district, made the presentation at the workshop, which included a switch from Blue Cross Blue Shield to AETNA and included a clinic that would be located nearby.
Smith said the move should generate about $750,000 in plan savings.
“AETNA is putting a full time customer service/claims advocate on site at ECISD,” Smith said.
The presentation showed that ECISD will have a dedicated customer service team and dedicated toll-free number.
AETNA is building an ECISD dedicated website to assist employees with provider searchers, general plan information and more, the presentation showed.
Members will have access to CVS health HUBS at no cost for after hours and weekend acute care visits.
A move from Express Scripts to PCA Rx was recommended. The move will generate about $1 million in plan savings, the presentation showed.
Employees will now have access to both CVS and Walgreens pharmacies. Currently, they only have access to CVS.
They will have Texas-based customer service and lower co-pays are expected for all members.
The presentation showed that the clinic is expected to open in the middle of January to provide all employees and dependents on the health plan direct access to care.
The initial/first-year costs will be approximately $1.4 million, the presentation showed.
The savings generated and costs will be offset by doctors claim costs; decreased emergency room visits; decreased urgent care visits; disease management savings, the presentation showed.
The clinic will be staffed with a doctor, nurse practitioner and four medical assistants. It will be open 40 hours a week and hours are to be determined.
All services will be provided at no cost to employees on the health plan (visits, lab work, shots, etc.) Exceptions to this are those on the health savings account plan who will have a $25 co-pay.
Open enrollment will be from Nov. 1-Dec. 3 and there will be no increase in premiums this year.
The plan is designed to provide little disruption to employees. Help will be available from First Financial on every campus to help with enrollment.
Employees will receive new medical and pharmacy ID cards.
The presentation said they will work with the outgoing pharmacy vendors to get mail-order prescription and prior authorizations transferred over.
If this does not happen, members may have to get a new prescription from their provider and they will grandfather prior authorizations for 90 days to ease the transition.
They are looking for a site currently.
There will be an onsite AETNA person. Smith said he has told AETNA that person has to be bilingual.
Chief Financial Officer Deborah Ottmers said they already have a First Financial person locally.
Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Lilia Nanez presented MAP, or Measure of Academic Progress, data to the board.
Nanez reviewed where the district started, where it is now and how ECISD is responding with accelerated learning plans.
Last year, testing began with kindergarten through eighth grade reading and math, English 1 and 2 and algebra 1.
“This year, we expanded our experiences and our journey with MAP by adding third through eighth grade science. All of this is important, especially because, again, science is part of our accountability system, and we must be able to track student achievement and growth in that content area …,” Nanez said.
The local results were overlaid with national results that showed students in kindergarten and first grade above the national norm for 2020 and at it for 2021. But as students went through the grades, gaps occurred.
She said there was a “huge improvement” in participation rates between the beginning of the year in 2020 and this fall.
Many students were phased in last year and remote testing was provided, but it was difficult.
“It was something new for schools across the country. But we are very pleased with the participation rate for 2021 beginning of the year as we had 98% of our students, district wide engage in the MAP beginning of the year assessment with elementary, being at 99% this beginning of the year, so we’re very pleased with that,” Nanez said.
But beginning in second grade and as the students move through the grade spans, there is a gap between the national norm and ECISD grade levels.
“You will notice that the gap between the national norm and the ECISD grade level norm grew. That was really telling me it was very good for us to see. The same story was with reading. Last year, our kindergarten students were well above the national norm. So you’ll see the national RIT norm was 137. Our kindergarten students were at 143 a year ago. Same thing for first grade in reading; 158 was ECISD’s norm while the national norm was at 156. But the story was the same beginning in kindergarten, and as the students moved up our grade spans, we saw a gap, a learning gap that really grew as the students moved throughout the grade levels,” Nanez said.
She added that they did a lot of reflection on the data last year.
Nanez said there are many ways that ECISD is responding to the data. Under House Bill 4545, districts and schools required to have accelerated learning plans.
“Every campus principal and teacher has to meet with parents for students who are not successful on the STAAR test. And so we are using this real-time data from the MAP test to inform the teachers on what the student’s needs are for their accelerated learning plans. So we are engaging in high-impact tutoring, with many kids using our ESSER funds. We are continuing our journey with leveled literacy intervention where last year we did see some significant improvement with quality implementation for reading. Campuses are also doing face to face tutoring, Saturday school so campuses do have autonomy on some of these accelerated learning instructional plans. That is one thing that we’re doing is we’re implementing the accelerated learning plans based on the data and they’re very custom. The high-impact tutoring in most instances is individual tutoring; one tutor; one student. The data will drive those individual tutoring sessions to create a very personalized experience for our students,” Nanez said.
ECISD also is using Istation, which has really improved its reports. Because of that, they are able to connect Istation and MAP together, and we are monitoring progress with rate of improvement reports through the Istation. “We will be sharing those reports with you on a monthly basis on your board updates. We also are able because we are now engaged with the science, we are now able to see what the gaps are in third grade and fourth grade, to provide what the students need to be successful on that fifth grade science test. Same thing with the eighth grade science test. We are able to see where those learning gaps are in sixth and seventh grade with the MAP test, to be able to adjust our instruction to ensure that the students are receiving what they need to be successful,” she said.
The beginning of the year kinder map and all other assessments that kindergarten students engage in are informing the prekindergarten team on what they need to do in pre kindergarten to make sure that the students are kinder ready when they arrive on the first day of school as kindergarteners.
“We also are having family data meetings with every single student in the district. Teachers have been busy from the very beginning of school, having data meetings with parents. They are sharing STAAR data, short-cycle assessment data, and math is now part of that conversation,” Nanez said.
She showed an example of a family report.
The winter assessment will be given in January. A report will be given to the board in either late February or March. The spring assessment will be done in April.
“We’re very eager to see that as well because that will give us that final snapshot of what MAP is going to predict for our students on STAAR, and we will share that data with you as well. The summer assessment will be given for our summer learning experience and to ensure that students are continuing their learning journey through the summer. And then in 22-23, we are going to add the high school biology MAP assessment for that year,” Nanez said.
Board member Carol Gregg asked about projections for schools that are in their fifth year of improvement required or beyond.
“What does the data show? Are we going to have multiple campuses in five years?” Gregg asked.
Nanez said the data shows the prediction from the MAP scores. “We can run the numbers for you to see what the possible ratings are, but in order to get out of IR, all the campuses have to be at a C rating,” she said.
Superintendent Scott Muri said the state accountability system right now is heavily reliant upon growth.
“… You’re only looking at proficiency tonight and this is a projection of the proficiency level, but we have no idea what growth is going to look like (at) the end of the year and that’s a significant piece that many of our low performing schools depend upon to really help them go from where they would be with proficiency to a much higher place,” Muri said.
Muri said over half of the campuses would be failing based on proficiency on the data.
“And you can draw the poverty line. Fifty-six percent in our school district — poverty. You can almost take that same number and apply it to our schools, if you just looked at proficiency we would have over half of our schools (on IR),” Muri said.
Muri said the state accountability system will only give schools A’s, B’s and C’s this year. “There will be no D’s or F’s,” he said.
