Curriculum overhaul leads to new reading program

BY MURRAY BISHOFF Special to the Cassville Democrat

The Purdy school board heard updates on programs and renewed insurance for the coming year during its October meeting.

This is a transitional year at Purdy in light of curriculum changes that followed the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Missouri School Improvement Program 6. Superintendent Travis Graham, who started in fall 2021, noted that a large percentage of students were scoring “below basic” on the state’s Missouri Achievement Program annual tests.

In the two years that followed, Graham said the district “bulldozed its curriculum” in math and English language arts. Julie Dalton, elementary principal, and her team structured new strategies that began to show results in the 2022-2023 school testing.

“We’re trying to grow all kids,” Graham said. “We now have three levels of intervention. As kids perform, we’ve seen growth in ‘advanced and proficient’ performance at all levels.

“We’re into the final tuning. We put better interventions in place. We’ve done a lot with the English language learners population. We added a third ELL teacher last year. That better targeted reading intervention with those who struggle to read, who make up a large percentage of the ELL population” The big change this year comes in moving away from the Americorps Reading Coaches program, which operated in Purdy since 1999. Purdy had a unique program for Barry County.

Graham acknowledged, “Americorps had a rich history in Purdy. With MSIP 6, we saw high needs in our reading program. We had to expand and adjust. The Reading Success Program we adopted now services a lot more kids than what Americorps did.

“You know the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We had to make adjustments across the board. If our kids aren’t growing academically, then we’re not doing our job.”

Susan Funkhouser presented an update on the Parents as Teachers program. She said this year 15 families are engaged, two more than last year, serving 21 children, over half of which are considered high needs. Assisting staff had 16 hours of professional development completed since Aug. 1. The group conducted 31 family visits since June 1. Funkhouser described several networking achievements for engaged parents, creating activities for dads who wanted to provide better support for their children, and distributing books to families at no cost to the district.

Board members also scheduled their budget workshop for the coming school year. Graham emphasized that this year will be pivotal for the district to meet the standard of Senate Bill 727, mandating school districts must pay teachers $40,000 as base pay, beginning next year.

“Our pay base was $31,250 in the 20212022 school year,” Graham said. “In my first week, we raised that to $33,000. For the last two years, we used the Governor’s Teacher Baseline Salary Grant. This year we adjusted our base to $38,000 without the grant. Next year we’ll be paying $40,000. The board has been adamant to have to raise teacher salaries. We’ve been very aggressive in the classified and certified side. Even substitutes don’t get paid below $15 an hour.

“It’s a challenge for us. We’re bookended by Cassville and Monett. Candidates ask, ‘Why should we work in Purdy when we can go elsewhere and get paid more?’ Higher salaries help us recruit and retain highly qualified teachers, which continues to be our goal. Getting certified teachers these days is hard to do.”