Brandywine board members discuss enrollment, student engagement, marching band
Published 3:01 pm Tuesday, October 29, 2024
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NILES — Monday’s Brandywine Board of Education meeting featured reports on enrollment and staff engagement as well as a tribute to the Brandywine Marching Band.
Superintendent Travis Walker said the official fall enrollment count ended up a little lower than anticipated but still higher than last year’s numbers. He said the official fall enrollment count was 1,313 students, as compared to last year’s 1,284 students.
“We’re up 29 students from last year’s numbers,” he told board members. “We’re down from what we originally thought it would be.”
Walker also talked about the administrative observations already done this fall as well as efforts related to fostering engagement with staff and students.
He said the administrative observations were started two years ago with himself, building principals and Assistant Superintendent Amanda Lezotte participating. While the goal two years ago was to make sure teachers were being evaluated uniformly across the board, the goal now is to see all the great things teachers are doing in the classroom.
The reason for the change in administrative observations goals is that the state has changed how staff evaluations are conducted. Staff, including principals and administrators, are no longer evaluated in that way with no “effective” or “highly effective” ratings given out.
“Those ratings are gone but we want to get into the classrooms anyway,” Walker said. “It’s great to hear the conversations principals are having and it’s great to get in there to see the great things teachers are doing. We will be doing it two more times this year.”
The district’s fostering engagement effort is continuing after a group of teachers and administrators went to trainings over the summer and the staff of the consulting firm the district hired came to Brandywine to talk to the other staff.
He said the district conducted a survey of the 85 to 90 students who have taken part in the training and got responses from 31 teachers. “All but two have tried at least two strategies in the classroom about relatedness and credibility,” he said. “There are six elements and those were the first two, we’re going to slowly work through the rest.”
He added that 58 percent of respondents employed strategies multiple times a week and another 21 percent once a week. Also, 70 percent of staff said it was easy to implement the strategies, 22 percent were neutral about it and two percent said it wasn’t easy to work the strategies into daily lessons.
“Half of the staff said they felt like the strategies led to better engagement from students this year,” he said. “One teacher said they felt like student engagement was up but they weren’t sure if it was from the strategies or the fact that no cell phones are allowed in the middle/high school.”
In the tribute to the marching band, band director Ruth Livengood reported that the band has had a “really wonderful marching season” and got top scores at the marching festival. Members of the band’s pep band attended the board meeting and entertained board members with a number from the band’s halftime show.
She said the band got first place out of seven bands at a Hastings competition and ranked second out of more bands at an East Kentwood competition.
“We’re making a name for Brandywine in a huge, awesome way,” Livengood said. “Students memorize the music as it’s easy to run into others on the field if they don’t memorize the music. People took notice of that and band directors of large schools came up to me and complimented me. They had never heard of us but thought the band is great.”
The high school band has 80 to 85 members and there are 60 students each in the sixth and seventh grade bands and another 35 students in the eighth grade band.
In discussion items, Walker said that the board will be asked to approve a salary schedule for non union employees. He said the salary schedule is not creating anything new but documenting the salaries non union employees already are getting so they will be protected when they get ready to retire.
Walker also gave an update on the ad hoc committee formed earlier this fall to address concerns with new Title IX regulations. That committee consists of staff, parents, students, community members and two school board members, John Jarpe and Michelanne McCombs.
The committee will meet Nov. 12 at 6 p.m. at the middle/high school media center. Board members debated whether to have the meeting open or closed to the public and decided to keep it closed so people will feel more free to talk. A report from the committee will be made at the board’s next meeting on Nov. 18.