Turnaround Task: Fight Fatigue

The extra-long school day at the district’s first in-house turnaround school has brought its share of ​“fatigue,” but staffers are finding ways to stay ​“resilient” as they face the next changes to the classroom.

So reported Principal Karen Lott of the Brennan/Rogers school at Monday night’s Board of Education meeting.

Lott was one of three principals, along with those from King/Robinson and the Davis Street School, who reported back Monday on the progress of changes they’re implementing. Their schools were the first batch to be graded, placed into three ​“tiers” and to undergo changes under the city’s reform drive. The rest of that group, including Domus Academy, shared progress reports two weeks prior.

Lott is six months into the first year of a so-called ​“turnaround” at the West Rock school, which ranked at the bottom of the district in test scores when she took it over in 2009. The school just finished what will be its first major hurdle—the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMTs), the standardized tests on which federal, state and local powers will judge the school’s success.

Lott told the board Monday that she’s not expecting ​“huge leaps and bounds” in test scores this year, but ​“incremental steps.” She said for the first several months of the year, staff spent a lot of time focusing on school culture.

“Students learn best with a high level of trust and safety,” the principal said. Getting to that level took some work.

She said she has studied research on other ​“turnaround” schools, where low-performing schools undergo drastic changes in effort to boost student performance. Most have a 50 percent turnover rate in staff, she said. The turnover rate at Brennan/Rogers, where Lott got full say in choosing her own staff, was over 65 percent, Lott said.

“Who are these people?” was students’ reaction upon meeting the new slate of teachers, Lott said.

“They tested us, and they tested us.”

Lott said a new Code of Character put together by the new staff set new expectations for school behavior. Staffers used a method called ​“Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports,” where kids get rewarded for good behavior, instead of getting attention only when they misbehave.

Teachers got a break this year, in that class sizes were kept small and no new students were admitted after the beginning of the year. By after Christmas break, staff braced for another round of acting out — but found that students returned ​“like lambs,” Lott said. They had adjusted to the new faces and new rules.

Lott rattled off some early signs of success: Better turnout at parent report card night, a drop in suspensions (she didn’t give numbers), and, thanks to a new librarian and a big literacy push, a lot more reading. Students took out over 5,000 books from the school library so far this year, compared to 540 last year, Lott said.

Now that the school culture has been put into place, Lott said, the school plans to put more focus on learning.

“We are now ready to push on the instructional piece,” she said. That means adding more ​“rigor” and ​“challenge” into the classroom and doing more ​“expeditionary learning,” where students dive deep into a topic and create their own artifacts around the idea.

About 15 teachers from the school, some donning pink-lettered Brennan/Rogers T‑shirts, showed up to support their principal Monday night.

Lott commended them several times for being ​“resilient” in the face of many changes. Just this year, as it was going through the ​“turnaround” process, Brennan/Rogers also got named a magnet school with a media and communications theme. Teachers have been working to incorporate that into their teaching, while undergoing weekly professional development on other tools of the trade.

For example, two fourth-grade teachers, both new to the school and with less than two years’ teaching experience, went through a training mid-year on a new type of reading intervention called Plugged In. They happily accepted the task, she said.

At times, Lott said, she has detected what she called ​“initiative fatigue” in the face of all these changes.

The extra-long school days, which stretch from 8:20 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. four days a week, leave teachers and students feeling pretty tired, she added.

Board member Alex Johnston asked if the extra hours are being used to add classroom teaching time.

Lott said for the most part, no — the extra time allowed for the reshuffling of schedules and adding a writing class. But it’s used mostly for professional development, community meeting, and high-interest club activities.

“Ms. Nathan’s School”

Lola Nathan, principal of the Davis Street Arts and Academics School, shared what she’s been doing with her newfound autonomy after the school was ranked in the top-performing Tier I. Her school teamed up with Edgewood School for a summer program that drew over 100 students. Davis ramped up its February CMT camp while kids at other schools were on vacation. It’s also doing a new literacy program with the Yale Center for British Arts, using masterpieces as a springboard for creative writing. Parents and students are learning more about college.

Overall, the changes haven’t been drastic, but Nathan said she’s been able to focus on bringing ​“more of the best” ideas that were working at the school.

Two parents attested to that fact. ​“My kids are just doing so well,” said Sandra Rodriguez (at left in photo).

Stephanie Bennett (at center in photo, with Nathan at right), a parent of two kids at the school who’s become an official parent liaison, gave an inadvertent testament to Nathan’s leadership in the way she referred to the school.

Bennett said she could send her kids somewhere else, but ​“I choose Ms. Nathan’s school.”

That sentiment is reflected in the school surveys, where schools with strong principals like Nathan earn high marks from parents, staff and kids.

ROAR

Principal Iline Tracey, who’s credited with already lifting King/Robinson from many years on a federal watch list for failing schools, is making more changes at the Tier II school.

She came to the meeting wearing a pouch around her neck — one she always wears around the school this year. The pouch holds ​“ROAR” bucks, which stands for respect, open-mindedness, a positive attitude, and being reflective. The cards are a form of positive behavior supports.

Tracey said teachers haven’t been trained in the method yet, so they’re doing it ​“our own King/Robinson way.”

The number of suspension days so far this year dropped to 25 from 44 using the new method, Tracey said.

In another sign of progress, parent turnout at report card night has been so great that there aren’t enough parking spots, Tracey reported. She asked the board to consider adding parking on what she called a ​“geese field” near the school.

Like Lott, Tracey said her teachers are feeling the fatigue of their new regimen: Starting this year, King/Robinson extended teachers’ work days. Now they come in before school to work with teachers in other grade levels in ​“vertical teams.”

“The teachers are tired,” Tracey said. A lot of them have young kids at home. ​“They’re so tired they don’t want to do after-school programs” that begin at 3:30 p.m. for in-district kids. Tracey said she sometimes relieves those teachers by taking their classes to the gym during the day.

Johnston commended all three principals for what he called a ​“culture of continuous improvement.”

He asked Tracey if she thought she’d benefit from extending students’ school day as Brennan/Rogers did. Extending the day to add more learning time is a key practice of some charter schools, including New Haven’s Amistad Academy.

“They only way I’d go to such a drastic measure,” Tracey replied, ​“is if my school falls back into its old predicament.”

Lott said at Brennan/Rogers, staff have found ways to ​“rejuvenate” and keep each other going in part through ​“bonding” events that ​“promote unity.”

Monday, as that school’s staff walked out of the board room with their principal, one declared yet another ​“staff meeting!” This one was announced in a joyous tone. The location: Christopher Martin’s pub.