Purdy schools are reviewing the state’s assessment of the district and looking at ways to improve school performance.

The state released its annual performance review earlier this month.

Purdy Superintendent Travis Graham said the state took a new approach to its review process, grading each campus on a number of different criteria that feeds into a final score.

The district is graded on its diligence and timeliness for submitting data to the state, student performance on tests, attendance, participation in a number of courses and other factors.

“Our scores have identified areas of growth,” Graham said. “The APR is that state’s stamp that says, ‘Here’s where we are.’ The challenge is, an APR hasn’t been released since 2018 due to COVID.”

Since the last time the state released its APR, it revamped the system, rethinking how school districts are graded, creating a more rigorous mandate for scores.

The APR grades the districts on performance, which gauges student participation and performance, and “continuous improvement,” which focuses scores on the district’s engagement with submitting data to the state.

In the continuous improvement category, Purdy schools scored 51 of a possible 52 points.

In the performance category, the district scored a 74.3 of a possible 126 points.

“We can identify that we have areas of improvement we can make,” Graham said. “We have the people in the seats that can get the work done. In the improvement category, attendance was the only point we lost.”

Graham said the last time Purdy received an APR score from the state, its point value was in the upper 80s. He said the lower score this year is the result of changing benchmarks from the state, rather than a decrease in performance on campus.

However, he said, that does’t mean the district isn’t going to strive to improve the scores and provide the best possible educational experiences for students.

“Under MSIP 6, only four schools in the state scored over a 95,” Graham said. “There are no excuses. Our kids can, and our kids will. We have a large population of English as a second language students, and a large special needs population. Our response to these scores is to put the tools and resources in the gaps. We are going to make things better. Our kids deserve the best and we can give it to them.”

To that end, the Purdy School Board approved the hire of a new special education director. Previously, Elementary School Principal Dalton has served as the special education director. However, with the growth of special education students, Graham and Dalton said students would be best served with an individual who can focus primarily on those special education programs.

Graham also said the district is going to focus on professional development for teachers and faculty to ensure the district is rising to the challenge of the new state standards.

He explained that the state has implemented a new reading initiative that includes a rigorous evaluation of students through elementary school to ensure they are reading at grade level. He said that, while the state mandates that program in elementary school, Purdy will be implementing it in K through 12th grades to ensure all Purdy students graduate with strong reading skills.

He also said the district is going to continue focusing on school attendance. The state standard is that 90 percent of students should attend school 90 percent of the time.

He said in a district with no school resource officers, there is little recourse for students who do not attend class.

To mitigate that issue, Graham said Purdy has a longstanding focus on creating a school atmosphere that welcomes students.

“We try on the culture side to have Purdy be a place they want to be,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of growth this year, and we are going to continue to make sure our kids are performing at the level expected.”