“What is really important to me is that opportunity to get some open and honest feedback,” Superintendent Leon Hanhardt told the group. “We’re in the middle of exploring a lot, and this committee gives us a chance to hear from people on the future direction of our schools, and what is being said in the community. It gives us a chance to have good conversations about what we’re doing well and what we could do better.”
District leaders briefed community members on the goals they have set for the coming year, and reported out on data collected in the previous school year. They also discussed steps that are being taken in response to that information, and the community members who attended were encouraged to ask questions and provide their own perspective to the discussions.
“The committee is very responsive to the parents when we have discussions, and I’m amazed that more parents don’t participate,” said Chairman Rich Gustafson, who noted that the district created a part-time media specialist position when a desire for a higher level of communication and transparency was expressed at DAAC meetings a year ago.
One purpose of the committee is to meet a mandate included in Colorado House Bill 1338, which passed in 2018 in an effort to increase educator effectiveness, and Gustafson pointed out that there is value in the information district officials share with community members through DAAC. However, he indicated that the other objective of the District Advisory Accountability Committee is to gather input from community members to guide future actions and decision-making.
“Advisory and Accountability is all taken care of in that name,” observed Gustafson, who is in his third year as chair of the committee.
Accountability was the first order of business at the initial DAAC meeting of the year, however, and Hanhardt led off the two-hour discussion by presenting a district-wide data report from the previous school year, highlighted by the Performance Framework Ratings issued by the Colorado Department of Education annually.
The state’s School Performance Framework (SPF), is based primarily on the performance of the district’s students on the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) assessment, which is administered each spring to measure student growth and achievement in core areas. The data collected from the tests — which also includes the SAT/PSAT for high school students — is used to provide districts with accreditation ratings and identify which “school plan type” (Performance, Improvement, Priority Improvement, Turnaround) needs to be implemented for the following year.
“It helps give us direction,” Hanhardt explained.
Based on last year’s test scores, Bayfield School District 10-JtR again received an “Accredited” rating. BSD secured the second highest of the five levels of accreditation offered despite a decrease of 4.6% (from 62.7% to 58.1%) in the district’s overall score. That decrease was driven primarily by a pair of factors at Bayfield Middle School that put the school under a “Priority Improvement” plan a year after it had been elevated to the “Performance” level.
“We anticipated that we would see a dip happen at the middle school,” Hanhardt told the group. He explained that the school had lost two full-time teachers in core subject areas early in the school year, which resulted in less academic growth for some of the students. While the scores only decreased by 3.7%, the school lost ground in another performance indicator because of low participation numbers on the test.
“There were 16 students at BMS who were not accounted for as taking the test,” Hanhardt said, indicating that fell well short of the state’s goal of having districts test 95% of their students. Further investigation has revealed that 12 of the 16 students had stopped attending district schools at least three months prior to the test being administered last spring, however, which has prompted district officials to appeal that portion of the evaluation.
“Our intent is to file a request to reconsider with the state,” Assistant Superintendent Bill Hesford reported. “Our percentage should have place us in the ‘Improvement Plan’ category, but being at less than 95% participation knocked us down a full ranking to ‘Priority Improvement.’”
Bayfield Intermediate School jumped up 4.3% (from 62.6% to 66.9%) to stay under a “Performance Plan” for this school year, and Bayfield High School stayed at the “Performance Plan” level despite a decrease of 5.3% (from 62.7% to 57.4%). Bayfield Primary School students do not participate in the CMAS so there is no rating for that school.
After reviewing the state data from the previous year, Hesford revealed the 2024-25 Scorecard that Bayfield School District leaders created to capture a wider set of data and craft a more comprehensive approach to school improvement and student success.
“The scorecard work is a district effort to help align goals and priorities from the board and district level all the way down to the schools, administrators and teachers in the buildings,” Hesford explained.
As is the case with the state’s scorecard, the one created for the district sets priorities for student achievement and growth that are based on the Performance Framework. However, the BSD Scorecard goes much further by taking into account the culture of schools (from staff to students and their families) and defining relationships between staff members and their leaders to produce the greatest impact on learning.
Much of the data in those areas will be derived from surveys, and the district changed education survey companies this year in an attempt to gather more comprehensive data and improve reporting.
“We have changed survey companies, so we will not have perfectly comparable data from 2023 to 2024, but going forward we believe we will have better service. The new company is more concise and they do a better job of supporting the survey result rollout,” Hesford said, noting that the new survey company will also capture data from primary school students, which is something the former survey did not do.
“We think it is a good move, but it will impact our ability to compare data from this year to next and we will lose our historic data,” Hesford acknowledged.
The district’s data collection in this area is still relatively new and has been evolving as officials have embraced the use of surveys to measure things like culture and morale.
“This will be the first time that we do the parent engagement survey, and last year was the first time that we’ve done an employee satisfaction survey that has included the folks in our departments (non-instructional staff),” Hesford stated, admitting that confidence in the products and service offered by the new survey company make him optimistic about the quality of the data and the way it can be used to produce benefits down to the classroom level.
“For example, instead of once yearly data, we will have fall data to compare to spring data and that is more actionable for principals,” he said.
The targets that were set to determine if each of the identified priorities was being met also prompted discussion. Parent Jessie Ramirez suggested that district leaders consider setting goals based on trends and growth instead of setting hard percentage targets, and Hesford said he thought the idea merited further discussion in the future.
“It is a huge victory just to have that conversation with our parents,” he said, noting that the data and scorecards would be utilized heavily in the development of a new strategic plan for the district - the last of which was created in 2018. Hesford explained that it is time to evaluate the objectives set in the old strategic plan and define new ones moving forward.
Hanhardt applauded the change in survey companies and said the transition would help create a consistent accountability structure for all district leaders and help teachers and other staff members understand and meet the expectations of those leaders.
“We’re trying to align those surveys with our continuous improvement program,” Hanhardt suggested. He believes that doing so should help the different schools meet instructional and achievement goals, but more importantly, it will assist students in meeting the expectations defined for them in the Wolverine Graduate Profile.
“The district created a Wolverine Profile a few years back, and now each building has developed one,” Hanhardt announced, indicating that every effort would continue to be made to engage all of the district’s stakeholders in that process. Much of that work will be done by the individual School Advisory Accountability Committees that exist for each of the district’s schools and meet separately. Those groups had already had their first fall meetings, and the principals from each building provided their own reports at last week’s DAAC meeting.
Bayfield Primary School Principal Jan Alderton announced that her staff members would be receiving coaching this fall on a new Language Arts curriculum adopted last year. Instructors will also be using a new tool to provide targeted data and identify areas in need of improvement more frequently throughout the course of the year. A number of systemic changes have been made in the school to better link teaching objectives to state standards and protocols have been set to help address behavior expectations and achieve growth in that area as well.
Principal Will Machallister begins his first full year at the helm of Bayfield Intermediate School and echoed a sentiment expressed by Alderton that staff members are more aware of the direction and focus of school leadership than they were a year ago. He announced that an emphasis is being placed on attendance in his building this year and that staff members are hoping to improve that metric by focusing on school culture to ensure children feel safe and wanted. Students are also being invited to track their own educational data, and Machallister and his staff hope that awareness will allow for reflection and build motivation.
Principal Marcia Hoerl said that the goals set at Bayfield Middle School for the coming school year are meant to spur growth and typically exceed last year’s goals by 5%. She said that fall data is already looking good, and numbers have historically improved even more in the winter. Staff members are aware that the data has regressed in the spring in the past couple of years, however, and there is a commitment to “getting a handle on why” this year. The school is focused on its culture as well, and they have shifted from encouraging extra-curricular participation to simply emphasizing a desire for students to form “connections” in the school. The school is rallying around a “Row the Boat” motto this year to urge everybody to get on board and row together, and middle school students will also be made more aware of schoolwide data this year in the hopes of increasing awareness and motivation.
Sticking with the theme of increased connections, Bayfield High School’s new principal, Jason Wayman, reported that administrators in his building are ensuring a higher level of teacher engagement through frequent appearances and evaluations in the classroom. One of the things that is being monitored is a new cell phone policy that has been implemented to eliminate distractions and aid teachers in maintaining engagement. Wayman’s desire to build connections in his new community has been extended to his own School Advisory Accountability Committee, and he is actively recruiting community members to the BHS SAAC, indicating that he would like to have at least six more families represented on the committee.
When the principals were finished with their individual building reports, Hesford provided the committee with an update on the Master Facility Planning process the district is engaged in and reported that there has been a high level of engagement in that process from people both inside and outside of the Bayfield school community.
“We reached out to every possible segment and not everyone engaged with us, but we feel like we had a very good cross-section of the community,” Hesford stated.
In addition to identifying the need to renovate and expand Bayfield Middle School, the master facility planning exercise has also revealed other infrastructure needs and prompted discussions about the consolidation of district facilities and the possible liquidation of property no longer used for school operations.
“It’s a very open conversation and very transparent conversation, and I wanted to share that with this group as well,” Hanhardt said.