Monroe City schools recommended for accreditation

A committee from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools on Wednesday announced that it would recommend the entire Monroe City School District for accreditation.

The six-person team from AdvancED spent time in six Monroe schools and observed about 70 classes since Monday. They also interviewed 131 school board members, school and system leaders, staff members, parents and community partners before presenting their recommendation at a midday school board meeting.

Superintendent Brent Vidrine said for the past 18 months, the district has been preparing to get the entire district accredited, not just individual schools.

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"Currently we have basically four schools that have been accredited, and we want our entire district to become credited because we believe it's a sales point," Vidrine said. "We talk about CenturyLink bringing employees here."

AdvancED provides an external review by education professionals from various districts. Bill Craig, the lead evaluator, is from Richmond, Virginia. The rest of the team were: Martha Patten from Bossier Parish Schools; Kim Pendleton from Caddo Parish Public Schools; Tracy Hendrick from Clay County, Florida; Tealy Williams from Highland County Schools in Florida; and Jeff Hand from the Zachary Community School District.

Craig said the team provides feedback on seven domains and highlights areas that the district needs to improve and points out the district's "powerful practices" that should be continued and expanded.

In general, AdvancED looks at five standards of highly effective school systems, Craig said.

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Teaching and learning impact

In a seven-domain review of classroom instruction, the district received high scores for having a well-managed and supportive learning environment. The lowest score on that portion of the review regarded the amount of technology that students were handling in the classroom.

The committee recommended that the district should:

• Define and implement a comprehensive planning process that reviews performance data and aligns it with district improvement goals and professional development priorities;
• implement a formal mentoring program for teachers;
• create a routine feedback and supervision process to ensure that classroom instruction is aligned with curriculum.

These recommendations must be addressed within two years.

The committee said the district was doing a good job implementing grading and assessment consistently.

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Leadership capacity

The committee recommended that the district should create more opportunities for community stakeholders to get involved in schools' and the district's improvement processes.

Resource utilization

The committee lauded the school system's efforts to partner with community stakeholders and the way faculty and instructional staff work to secure the resources students need.