The return of summer learning post water crisis, a MAP results overview and a bevy of candidates for the Ector County ISD Board of Trustees were on the mind of Superintendent Scott Muri during his Wednesday media call.
A boil water notice was expected to remain in effect through at least Friday in the aftermath of a 24-inch water line break that occurred Monday.
“We will serve breakfast and lunch, but our cafeteria has prepared meals that do not require the usage of water. We will have bottled water on site so kids that attend summer learning will have access to bottled water throughout the day,” Muri said.
Breakfast and lunch was prepackaged meals or things that can be served cold.
“Hopefully on Monday, we’re back to full speed,” he added.
Summer learning is scheduled through June and July. They have time off for July 4 and the school and school offices are on a four-day work week.
Data from the Measure of Academic Progress tests in reading, math and science were shared with trustees June 14.
“We provide assessments in all three of those content areas and we use that tool to help us know and understand how kids are growing in those three content areas throughout the year. We administer it at the beginning of the year, at the middle of the year and again at the end of the year, so on Tuesday night our trustees were presented with our end of the year data for the ‘21-22 school year and data indicate that not only are our students growing, but growing at significant rates. What you would normally expect is that if a child attends school, or a full year, 180 days, they would learn for 180 days. So the growth would reflect 180 days of learning. What we saw in our data, however, is that many of our students were growing beyond just 180 days so they were learning more than what was expected. We saw that across the board in mathematics and in many areas in reading,” Muri said.
He said that the district is excited about that and noted that it reflects the hard work of teachers, administrators and all those who support student learning.
He added that there was strong growth in math from kindergarten through high school.
“This is important for our students to gain more than just one year in mathematics,” Muri said. “(Mathematics) was affected significantly by the pandemic. In fact in Texas, we saw approximately a 19-point drop in mathematics scores across the state of Texas and that was due to the loss of learning in the pandemic,” he added.
Muri said they were excited to see that students not only received a full year’s worth of learning, but surpassed a year’s worth of growth.
“That means that our kids are not just maintaining but they’re getting ahead and that’s the right thing to do … We also saw significant growth in particular areas in reading, so not only, again, maintaining but actually getting ahead and in some instances surpassing where we were pre-pandemic. We didn’t lose as much in the area of reading not only when we look at ECISD, but across the state of Texas, and even nationally, we see that reading was the academic area that didn’t suffer as much loss during the pandemic and as kids suffered in mathematics,” Muri said.
He added that significant growth in reading and math was seen in kindergarten students.
“That is a direct correlation to kids coming in better prepared. … We transitioned to a full-day, pre k program for our 4 year olds and this year those students entered kindergarten. At the beginning of the year we saw a dramatic increase in kindergarten readiness and then our MAP data indicate that our kindergarten just really blew it off the top. They really outperformed any other group of kindergartners that we’ve seen,” Muri said.
“… It’s proof that early readiness makes a difference as kids matriculate through school … so great news for our kindergarten teachers and prek teachers that support those kids,” he added.
In sixth grade, ECISD saw significant growth in reading and mathematics.
“That is a difficult transition year from elementary to middle, but our sixth graders indicated clearly that they had a very successful year …,” Muri said.
He commended teachers and principals for a job well done.
STAAR and end-of-course exam results will be presented at the board meeting. He said the increased growth will yield increased proficiency levels among students.
“… MAP assessment has a (predictor) based on how students are growing. We pay a bit more attention to just pure growth. However, our primary use of the MAP assessment is just to monitor the growth of our students as they are working through the Texas standards. The map assessment is directly aligned to the standards that we have in Texas, so the data that is generated from the MAP assessment really helps our teachers know what concepts students have mastered and then which concepts students still need to work on,” Muri said.
He added that teachers use that data to inform the lessons that they provide.
The board of trustees will conduct interviews with eight prospects for the District 7 spot vacated by Nelson Minyard at a special called meeting 6 p.m. Monday.
There will be a public comment period before trustees go into closed session.
The board will vote on the appointee during the regular meeting June 21. Applicants are Randy Adams, James Drexler, Toni Hardesty, Dennis Jones, Travis Overton, John Rabenaldt, David Sovil, and Robert Thayer.
The board will interview all eight candidates in closed session for 20 minutes each one at a time, Muri said.
He added that he was pleased as a superintendent and he knows trustees were pleased that so many people expressed interest in the position.
“… In fact, more people expressed interest (but) they simply didn’t live in District 7 …,” Muri said.
