Comments and Attachments (Evidences)
1
SchoolQualityFactors
Diagnostic
Comments and Attachments (Evidences)
Table of Contents
I.Potential for Mistakes in the SQF ratings in eProve
II.Comments Directions
III.Comments to Paste
Clear Direction
Healthy Culture
High Expectations
Impact of Instruction
Resource Management
Efficacy of Engagement
Implementation Capacity
IV.Evidences Directions
V.Evidences (URLs) to Copy and Paste
Clear Direction
Healthy Culture
High Expectations
Impact of Instruction
Resource Management
Efficacy of Engagement
Implementation Capacity
VI.How to Complete the Assurances in eProve.
VII.Downloading and Uploading Completed SQF & Assurances PDF
I.Potential for Mistakes in the SQF ratings in eProve
Apparently, as you are selecting the ratings in eProve, it is not just the radio buttons that respond to make your choices or changes. Please see screenshot below. Clicking ANYWHERE in the area of the ratings could potentially change the choice you made on your ratings. So, please be careful and use the sidebar on the left-hand side to move around the document. When all done, download your report and compare the ratings on your downloaded report to your SQF paper notes to be sure they are consistent. You can always fix them and download a new report.
II.Comments Directions
In eProve, under each SQF, copy and paste each commentfrom this document into the comments area.
Optional: Customize the narrative to add additional information about your school.
.
III.Comments to Paste
You are encouraged to read through the narratives and add some personalization, however it is not required. You may want to search for all the instances of “Our school…” and change a few of them to your school’s name.
Note: eProve’s comment box removes all formatting when it converts to a PDF. (The PDF is what the reviewers will be reading.) In fact, even paragraph/line breaks get lost when it converts to a PDF. So, you will notice I added some HTML code to the narrative. This tagbr/<br/> tells eProve to add two line breaks.
You are welcome to personalize the text, however keep in mind that if you remove these (br/>br/>) then your paragraphs will all run together when it converts to a PDF.
Yellow highlighted text is only for your school if it applies. If that section does not apply, be sure to omit that highlighted section.
Clear Direction
Here at <insert school name>, our Mission and Vision captures how our culture unites us in our efforts to achieve our school goals to improve learning and achievement for all of our students. At least one goal statement from the District’s Strategic Plan, and one Long Term Outcome in our School Improvement Plan (SIP), is aligned to the District's Strategic Plan. Our goal statements are written in the form of a Theory of Action, helping us connect our strategy to our actions and relationships which is critical to good instruction and student learning. <br/<br/>
As school-based teachers and leaders, we continue to offer feedback and insight during the journey of improvement as guided by the Strategic Plan through our voices on school-based and Regional Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), as well as advisory members to the School Advisory Council for the SIPs. In addition, families add a critical voice to our school improvement efforts by serving on the School Advisory Council (SAC) which provides input on the goals, strategies, action steps, and budget priorities outlined in our School Improvement Plan.<br/<br/>
A few of the ways our school shares information and gains parental and community support is during parent night programs, through Academic Parent Teacher Teams (APTT), and via announcements on our individual schools' newsletters and webpages. Edline is a web based resource to communicate information directly to parents. Our school has an Edline webpage where parents can find school announcements, resources provided by the school, a calendar of events, and reports on their children's academic progress. Parents can access their children's grades through the teacher's online grade book as well as online textbooks and other resources. <br/<br/>
Healthy Culture
br/<br/>The four strategic themes of the School District of Palm Beach County’s 2016-21 Strategic Plan provide a guide for our school to nurture a healthy school climate and ensure a common path to accomplish the long-term outcomes. <br/<br/>
Our school’s Single School Culture Coordinator (SSCC) serves to support our school year-round. Our SSCC works closely with our school leadership team, supports our teachers during Common Planning and Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to ensure the effective and relevant instruction for all students, with equity and access. School Master Board (Master Schedule) analysis helps us identify time for Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and Common Planning as systems for additional focus on continuous improvement. Unlike in the past., our school now has flexibility to make school-based staffing decisions around literacy, math, and science coaching to fill instructional support positions based on our school’s unique needs. <br/<br/>
In our Master Schedule, we have a weekly block of 90 minutes of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) for Common Planning which helps us focus on continuous improvement. This helps our school as well as the District achieve the objectives of the Strategic Theme, "Creating a High Performance Culture," and ensures continuous improvement. <br/<br/>
The District administers the School Effectiveness Questionnaire (SEQ) each year. The SEQ measures perceptions regarding the effectiveness of our schools, and provides important information to schools and the District to develop and sustain a High Performance Culture. The SEQ allows us to provide important feedback toward the District Goal "Student-First Philosophy", helps us formulate our goals for our SIP, and develop and maintain Single School Culture. <br/<br/>
Family and our community members add a critical voice to our school improvement efforts by serving on the School Advisory Council (SAC) which provides input on the goals, strategies, action steps and budget priorities outlined in our School Improvement Plan. In addition, our school shares information and gains parent and community support during parent night programs and via announcements on our schools' newsletters and webpages, as well as social media. Edline is a web-based resource used to communicate information directly to parents. Our school uses our Edline webpage so our parents can stay informed about school announcements, resources, the calendar of events, and reports on their children's academic progress. Parents can access their children's grades through the teacher's online grade book as well as online textbooks and other resources. <br/<br/>
High Expectations
br/<br/>We are committed to quality teaching and effective leadership, as well as involvement by both parents and the community at large, as evidenced by culture and practices. Our school holds itself accountable to high standards as evidenced by several District policies, the District’s Strategic Plan, the Principal Supervision Model, and the School Improvement Process. <br/<br/>
Our teachers and staff are held to the highest standards for ethics, governance, and leadership through School Board policies including 3.02 Code of Ethics and Florida State Statute 112.313 Standards of conduct for public officers, employees of agencies, and local government attorneys. All staff at our school is held to the same ethical standards set forth in the following School Board policies: Code of Ethics (3.02), Equal Employment Opportunity (3.05), Prohibiting Discrimination and Harassment (3.19), and Acceptable Use of Technology (3.29). <br/<br/>
The School Effectiveness Survey (SEQ) gathers input from our teachers, students, and parents on many factors including school leadership, teaching and learning, and school climate. These surveys are completed yearly. <br/<br/>
The commitment that all students will meet high standards of learning is evident within our school as we abide by the District’s Vision and Mission where “all learners reach their highest potential” (Vision) and receive a “world-class education with excellence and equity” (Mission).
Our school aligns to the Strategic Plan that was released in March of 2016 that outlines objectives, initiatives, and long term student outcomes to be achieved by 2021. Our School Improvement Plan provides a clear pathway in how we will improve our student outcomes to support the District, as a whole, in reaching its long term outcomes. Prior to the current strategic plan, the schools and teachers had little consistency in priorities for learning. <br/<br/>
To maintain high performance expectations for our school leadership, our principal participates in the District’s portfolio model of supervision. This contains a dashboard of key data elements tracked throughout the year to help drive improvements in our school. In addition, our school consistently implementsa detailed school improvement plan in order to drive achievement, collaboration, and improvement in our school. Our instructional staff responded positively to the 2017 School Effective Questionnaire (SEQ) on school climate and instructional and leadership effectiveness, demonstrating that our teachers feel supported in their efforts to help learners pursue challenging goals and success. Our parents, families, guardians, and community hold our school accountable to provide high quality programs and initiatives that align with community needs and priorities. When needed, our school avails itself of services provided by 33 agencies that have Cooperative Agreements with our District to provide behavioral health services for children and their families in coordination with the school student assistance teams (SBT). These services are provided on campus, in the community, or in the home. Our students have the benefit of a nurse in our school clinic, thanks to an agreement with the Health Care District of Palm Beach County (HCD). <br/<br/>
More than ever, our school has emphasis on student achievement using multiple data sources.
Transparency coupled with High Expectations is set forth by school leadership, and there is an explicit drive towards equitable access to provide different opportunities and to personalize learning for all students.A central theme within the Strategic Plan, “Effective and Relevant Instruction to meet the needs of all Students” is focused on the achievement of all students. Within this theme, there are embedded objectives to ensure a shared commitment and collective responsibility for the academic success of every student and to establish personalized learning opportunities for all students with initiatives focused on providing equitable access to high level rigorous instruction. <br/<br/>
Our community continues to provide feedback on our school’s programs and initiatives to ensure they align with community needs and priorities. To keep up with the use of social media, our school, backed by District direction, enjoys continued growth on the most popular social media platforms with many parents and community members providing ongoing, real-time feedback on shared moments. Live Facebook and Twitter Town Hall Q&As have proven very successful in engaging families and community members. <br/<br/>
Impact of Instruction
br/<br/>In line with the expectations and goals of our District, our school shares a strong commitment to monitor the impact of instruction on student learning and teacher quality. During the 2015 school year, the District engaged in multiple “Listening and Learning Tours” with community stakeholders in order to communicate the importance of education and to listen to and garner organic feedback. During that time, our students, parents, and community members had multiple opportunities to share their impressions about the strengths and areas of growth needed by the District. This feedback was utilized in the development of the initial (draft) copy of the newly developing District Strategic Plan. <br/<br/>
The final Board approved plan holds our school accountable to meet the Strategic Plan Long Term Outcomes. Student achievement and teacher effectiveness is carefully monitored by school administrators as well as the regional offices and the central office. Instructional monitoring takes place in many ways. The administrative team conducts formal and informal observations using the iObservation tool, which is a system we use to monitor progress of professional growth of our teachers in the area of delivering effective and relevant instruction. The Principal Dashboard is a data report that is updated regularly reflecting the most current data for our school. We use this data to progress monitor student attendance, teacher attendance, discipline incidents as well as academic summative data. <br/<br/>
The School Improvement Plan (SIP) provides our school with a focused school-based strategic plan for continuous improvement. All stakeholders are involved in writing our School Improvement Plan, using the “SIP Checklist” as a guide to ensure compliance with School Board Policy and State Statute. Using the SIP as a compass, grade level teams and individual teachers set goals which then focus their “data chats” with students where learners and teachers work collaboratively to set their own challenging goals. Our principal does the same with our teachers, as do our regional office superintendents with our principal. In addition, there are numerous opportunities to ensure that high expectations are embedded throughout our school culture through regularly scheduled and systematically planned teacher professional learning communities (PLCs), Principal Leadership Academies (PLAs), principal/regional superintendent conferences, school-based, regional and District workshops, as well as instructional rounds. <br/<br/>
Since 2013, our school has come a long way with consistently implementing research-based strategies for rigorous instruction and continuous improvement. We have since transitioned to a more informative model that includes the Palm Beach Model of Instruction (PB Model of Instruction) based on the Marzano teacher observation system. The PB Model includes areas of Student Performance, and Professional Growth, and is used by all instructional staff in our school. The PB Model teacher observation system provides a mode for discrete, constructive feedback from administrators to teachers with avenues and strategies to improve performance over time. The Student Performance component of our teacher evaluation system includes the achievement or growth of students on state and national assessments. Finally, the professional growth component allows for our teachers to self-select a development goal to improve their own practice over the year. <br/<br/>
Our principal and teachers are constantly and consistently monitoring the impact of instruction. Our ability to monitor student achievement has also improved since 2013 with updates to the Educational Data Warehouse (EDW), and the addition of the Performance Matters platform. The EDW and Performance Matters platforms now provide more detailed data on student achievement with an early warning system for student risk factors. Performance Matters also provides an online platform for formative and summative assessments that includes teacher-created and District-created tests in addition to data reporting. Our school participates annually in District-developed assessments prior to state testing to provide us with data to improve student outcomes. These platforms improve our teachers’ access to data, and shortens the time between assessment administration and the availability of results to guide our instructional decisions. <br/<br/>
Resource Management
br/<br/>The District’s Strategic Plan and its Initiatives are the main drivers of policies, procedures, and the budget development process. It is a priority for our school to allocate school resources in order to strengthen the capacity of our school to improve teaching and learning. We have systems in place in our District, and therefore at every school, to ensure resources are equitably allocated. <br/<br/>
At our school, all students and schools are considered, including (but not limited to) Students with Disabilities, English Language Learners, Dual Language Schools, Gifted Centers, and our Title 1 and low-performing schools. <br/<br/>
The District’s FY17 budget redirects over $15.0 million across all funds to schools and instructional teaching positions, employee raises, increased benefit costs, and strategic initiatives. Palm Beach County voters renewed a 0.25-mill tax dedicated for operational needs of District-operated schools to fund teachers, arts, music, physical education, as well as career and academic programs through June 30, 2019 and a one-penny sales tax increase in November 2016, dedicated to addressing critical capital needs – everything from replacing roofs and air conditioning units, to replacing old buses and outdated technology. The District has also increased amounts schools receive for federal grant funding for afterschool, prekindergarten, and magnet assistance programs. <br/<br/>
The focus on allocating resources to meet the needs of every learner is further supported by aligning the allocation of these resources with our school’s priorities for learning and the needs of every learner by: understanding the needs and challenges of our school and each sub-group of learners using the Strategic Planning Process, Principal dashboards, School Effectiveness Surveys, Staffing Needs and Quality Assessments, and focused policies and procedures. Vacancies at our school are monitored by the District continuously in order to address the needs of every learner. <br/<br/>
Our school has made good use of the recently-created positions, Human Resource Partners (HR Partners), who are assigned to schools by region. Our HR Partner works with our principal to ensure high-quality teachers are identified, screened, and selected. They also assist with onboarding, transfers, forced placements, separations, performance management, data collection and reporting, and other HR functions for all staff in our school. All of our teachers are required to meet the FL DOE Educator Certification requirements prior to being hired, and prior to being assigned to teach classes or courses that align with their certification. We adhere to all School Board Policies which govern our hiring processes and procedures. <br/<br/>