Principal Looks to Keep Progress Going

Upon receiving improved state audit results for the second year running, Principal Janet Brown-Clayton is hitting the ground running to keep turning around Lincoln-Bassett School.

In its second year as a state ​“turnaround” school, Lincoln-Bassett has gone from being a last-choice school fraught with behavioral problems and staff tension to a thriving preK‑6 neighborhood school in Newhallville. With two years of improvements under her belt, Brown-Clayton is turning her sights to the future —ensuring the school’s trajectory remains pointed upward even when the grant is gone.

Brown-Clayton has shown up at the past two Board of Education meetings to urge members to figure out a way to conserve Lincoln-Bassett’s special services and programs after a crucial state grant runs out in a year. Upon receiving improved state audit results for the second year running, she is hitting the ground running to plan to continue those improvements.

Brown-Clayton took over when a scathing 2013 audit report landed the school in the state Commissioner’s Network, a group of underperforming schools that sign up for a state-funded and supported internal makeover. As the new principal, she replaced most of the teachers and instituted a free before- and after-school program, expanding the potential school day by a total four hours.

Click here to read the first 2013 report.

The Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT) and the Boys and Girls Club run two different after-school programs. The before-school program was run by Camp Antrum Community Program the first year.

The state grant decreased from $750,000 to around $400,000 this year. Brown-Clayton had to hire individual school leaders and community members to run the morning program instead of contracting an outside organization.

“We hired as employees people that could do the work in the morning. Our [paraprofessionals] rotated throughout the building in the morning as well,” she said.

Brown-Clayton said she worries the improvements noted in the audit will slow without the extra funds.

The grant has definitely led to marked success in transforming the school culture — although leaders still have to focus on improving classroom instruction. The 2015 midyear audit rated the school mostly ​“proficient” in 23 different sub-indicators under four categories: school talent, academics, culture/climate and operations. In that audit, 14 of 23 sub-indicators were a 3 or ​“proficient” and eight of 23 were rated ​“developing,” including three that had improved from a 1 or ​“below standard” in 2014. The school improved in 18 of 23 sub-indicators between 2014 and 2015.

Click here to read a draft of the 2015 midyear report.

This year’s audit report cut out 10 sub-indicators, leaving a total of 13 determining the school’s overall progress.

Click here to read this year’s report.

Lincoln-Bassett School improved in four of 13 sub-indicators between midyear 2015 and 2016: leadership effectiveness, school environment, student attendance, and family engagement. Five of the 13 remained at a 2 or ​“developing.” For the first time, the school also received three 4 or ​“exemplary” ratings. None of the ratings decreased from previous years.

The school’s climate data has improved nearly across the board, with more students attending school daily and fewer being suspended. The number of out-of-school suspensions dropped from 128 in 2014, to 66 in 2015, to 11 from August to February 2016.

And chronic absenteeism decreased as well, alongside a districtwide dip with a new ​“Attendance Matters” campaign that deploys truancy officers and school leaders to keep kids going to school.

Superintendent Garth Harries acknowledged the progress Lincoln-Bassett has made and said he is dedicated to working on how to sustain it.

“It really is a transformed school and I think everyone in Newhallville should feel really proud of that,” he said.

Lincoln-Bassett is still struggling with raising standards of classroom instruction and academic rigor to a uniform high. Though the audit report says the instructional practice has improved at the school, auditors also found ​“variable evidence of rigorous instruction and authentic student work.”

Brown-Clayton does not like the word ​“rigor,” because it reminds her of post-mortem ​“rigor mortis,” of ​“stiffness and death,” she said. ​“I like to talk about higher-order questioning, higher-order thinking skill.”

To build that in the classroom, teachers and students are going to have to ​“think outside the box,” she said. More than 75 percent of teachers were new to the profession in 2014. ​“Coming into a certified position where you’re responsible for what your students learn — it is hard,” she said.

Teachers must learn to feel confident enough in their skills to guide students to think creatively about the material, she said.

Brown-Clayton said the reduced number of sub-indicators makes it harder to know the true rating; more data points would allow for an easier comparison to visualize growth.

The state Department of Education changed the audit report to focus more intensely ​“on the indicators that have the biggest impact on school transformation,” said spokesperson Abbe Smith. ​“Some of the indicators no longer included on the formal audit form are still considered when evaluating the overall success of the school.”

One difficulty not fully included in the audit: lack of funding and support for special education students.

The audit report is based on a February 2016 site visit. The school received a 2 or ​“developing” for its supports for ​“special populations,” including English language learners and special education students. The added note praises school leaders for providing services to students in their regular classrooms.

But those groups of students continue to grow at the school, leaving Brown-Clayton short-staffed.

In 2014, when she arrived at the school, 9 percent of the student population were receiving special education services. Now, about 17 percent of students are.

Brown-Clayton attributes that increase to an improved process for diagnosing students. The school has a high transience rate, with many new students enrolling mid-year.

Lincoln-Bassett has one full-time special education teacher and another staff member who chair the Planning and Placement Team, which plans and manages those special services. The chair has ​“conducted over 100 meetings this year,” she said, and is not available to be in the classroom.

She needs more personnel to fill in those gaps.

The Board of Education at its full meeting Monday approved a final budget of $228 million, which includes a deficit of $3.6 million, due in part to reduced allocations from the city and state.

The state grant was intended to be an ​“intense push of resources to help a school turn a corner,” Superintendent Harries said, and Lincoln-Bassett will not see that level of financial influx after it ends. Still, upcoming decisions on school-level budgets will keep the school in mind for extra resources.

“Lincoln-Bassett is a school that prior to the Commissioner’s Network was always at the bottom end of our funding scales. Part of what I hope we do as a district is make sure they stay on the high end of the funding scale,” he said.

Those decisions will ​“play out” throughout July, he said, along with ​“budget management” during the year.

Brown-Clayton said she will continue to attend Board of Education meetings to fight for a sustainability plan for the school. The salaries of some of the leadership and support teams, including the culture and climate coach, and the reading interventionist, are paid through the grant. The school has also dramatically increased students’ and teachers’ access to working technology, and part of the instructional technology coach’s salary is also paid through the Commissioner’s Network grant.

“We’ve done wisely with the money that we’ve been given,” she said. ​“We want to move with the momentum that we’ve been able to gain. I don’t want to wait until 2017 to start talking about sustainability.”