PUTNAM COUNTY
Assistant Superintendent Derick Austin reported the proposed timeline for the new elementary school to the Putnam County Board of Education on Monday.
The timeline estimates the design will start in June with construction beginning in January 2024. The expectation with this proposed timeline is that construction will end at the beginning of March 2025 and the school will open in August of that year. According to Austin, this plan allows room for adjustments if needed and they could potentially finish sooner.
The board proposed a few questions on the possibilities of supply chain issues and such affecting the timeline but Austin reassured them that this has already been accounted for. Another private meeting with the design team is scheduled for Feb. 1 for further discussion.
Beyond the new timeline, the board was also presented with two public comments by bus driver Daniel Brown and District 4 resident Charles Trumbo.
Trumbo spoke to the board about opening a discussion once again for the tax exemption of seniors 65 or older. His speech was reintroducing the topic that had been previously discussed at the tax meeting on Dec. 6.
Brown then stepped up to the podium to speak to the board about bus concerns. He expressed that a high number of faculty and staff have been driving the buses and that there are not enough bus drivers. He proposed the issue has to do with salary and student behavior disrupting the buses.
While he was not able to discuss the salary note in the three-minute speech, he did speak on student behavior and the lack of consequences for students on the buses. He asked for the board to open a discussion about these topics at the end of his speech.
The board thanked both individuals for their input and then moved into the normal agenda.
Superintendent Eric Arena spoke briefly about the Board on the Governor’s proposed FY22 budget and how that could potentially affect the 2024 and 2025 budgets in the next few years. Essentially, the budget would see more costs in different areas due to the governor’s proposals.
The meeting ended with Assistant Superintendent Laura Melton reporting the College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI) scores to the board. These scores measure student achievement based on content mastery, progress, closing gaps, readiness, and graduation rate. However, 2022 had some notable changes to the typical scoring due to not testing in 2020 or 2021.
Changes included progress not being reported for 2022 and instead, these scores will be used as a baseline for years moving forward. Closing gap scores will also be used to set a new baseline for the 3% to 6% improvement targets.
Content mastery was reported for 2022. It shows whether students are achieving at the level necessary to be prepared for the next grade, college, or career.
In 2022, Putnam County Primary School scored 60.5, Putnam County Elementary School scored 60.2, Putnam County Middle School scored 60.6, and Putnam County High School scored 54.7.
Readiness was also reported for 2022 with one minor change of not including student attendance in the score. Readiness reports on whether students are participating in activities preparing them for and demonstrating readiness for the next level, college, or career.
In 2022, Putnam County Elementary School scored 70, Putnam County Middle School scored 73.3, and Putnam County High School scored 74.8.
Finally, the graduation score was reported as 90.3% for 2022, only 0.3% lower than the graduation rate in 2021.
In her presentation, Melton reminded the board to be careful comparing these scores to previous years. Any scores before 2018 were scored on different rules and 2019 scores are less accurate since parents were able to opt students out of testing.
In 2019, a significant number of students opted out of testing which impacted the scores greatly. The final note was that there are no scores for 2020 or 2021 due to no testing leaving a three-year gap between the last CCRPI scores.
To learn more about how CCRPI scores are created and see this year’s reports, visit https://www.gadoe. org/CCRPI/Pages/default.aspx.