Superintendent Jason McCandless presented the plan to the School Committee on Wednesday.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — School administrators are launching a new plan to more closely align the efforts of all city schools and raise the level of education delivered.

 

Administrators presented the district improvement plan that will span the school year and be finely tuned by the 600 or so teachers working in the district. Superintendent Jason McCandless said the goals are to improve "consistency, equity, and community" through four key objectives.

 

The four areas of focus will be the development of a systematic curriculum and schedule for all schools; inventories and assessments of "interventions" used for students academically and for behavioral issues; and creating more diversity and diversity awareness across the district.

 

Deputy Superintendent Joseph Curtis will head the two academic objectives. 

 

Curtis told the School Committee on Wednesday that a Google Drive document has outlined a calendar shared among teachers to note timetables and curriculum taught. Three times during the year, the teachers among all of the schools for each grade will gather and finely tune when and what is taught. That'll bring out the best practices and lessons as well as create a "curriculum pacing guide." 

 

"They'll have a voice in the standards and the pacing of what is taught," Curtis said of teacher involvement.

 

That document will be "living" and teachers will collaboratively tweak the instruction each year, he said. 

 

Curtis will also be heading the effort to inventory and assess the types of curriculum used for interventions with struggling students academically. 

 

"Right now every building uses different interventions," Curtis said. "Our ultimate goal is to create an electronic menu, if you will, of effective interventions."

 

That menu will be in every school and, just like with the curriculum, will be analyzed and finely tuned by the instructors. District psychologist and school adjustment councilor Unit Leader Ann Marie Carpenter will oversee a similar plan for behavioral interventions. The behavioral one will be multitiered, she said, and look at the processes for all students, groups of at-risk students, and individualized interventions. 

 

McCandless will helm the effort to improve diversity. The superintendent said currently there aren't enough teachers of color for many students to relate to. He said that isn't just an issue in the schools but also in the community as a whole, where students don't see people of color working in high-level positions.

 

"We need to be more culturally competent ourselves and recognize our blind spots," McCandless said. 

 

McCandless hopes the school's efforts will evolve into a community effort and more and more people and organizations will have a "earnest discussions" about the diversity issues in the city.

 

"I think we need to have this conversation," he said. 

 

The plan doesn't focus on raising test scores but the superintendent said if these objectives are met, it will raise the level of education for all students. The plan hits on the "basic pieces" of education and by empowering the teachers to take the lead, he feels the educators themselves will have ownership of the teaching instead of being force fed a timeline and methods of teaching.

 

"This district plan needs to encompass everybody," the superintendent said.

 

For School Committee member Daniel Elias, leaving out the fluff about raising tests scores is just the way he'd prefer it. Elias said he's been critical of district improvement plans in the past because it didn't have any clear action plans. In this test, each of the initiatives to accomplish each objective has deadlines on a calendar shared among the district.

 

"This is the direction we need to go," said School Committee member Pamela Farron of the plan. 

 

Over the course of the school year, the objectives will be implemented but much of it will be gathering information as the teachers, as a group, analyze and construct the curriculum. In the next year, that data and the work of the teachers will be put into action.