Three Kansas schools recently received 2022 National Blue Ribbon Schools awards for having high scores on state and national tests. I sat down with leaders at the three schools to find out how they were getting those results and what are the biggest challenges they face.
Today, we look at Morris Hill Elementary School, which sits on the Ft. Riley military base and is part of Geary County USD 475.
I took a trip through security to enter the base and received a new ID badge to enter the school, where I met Principal Melisa Burgess, special education teacher Chantay Caron, English Language Learning teacher Christina Martin and was later joined by Superintendent Reginald Eggleston.
It soon became clear that the heightened security of a miliary base was not the only difference between Morris Hill and Kansas’ two other Blue Ribbon schools – R.L. Wright Elementary, north of Wichita, and Cottonwood Elementary, in the Andover school district.
“We look at our district as an international school district,” said Superintendent Eggleston. “We have students coming from everywhere. We have students who have attended schools in the Pacific, Europe and the United States. We have 43 different languages spoken in our district.”
Even students from other states within the U.S. come from vastly different school systems. Over 90 percent of the students at Morris Hill are from military families. Most have transferred from a different place, and many will only be in the school for a few years at most. That pattern also affects the staff, because many teachers are also in military families that frequently move.
Despite these differences, many of the strategies used to achieve Blue Ribbon status at Morris Hill are like those used at Blue Ribbon schools in suburban Wichita and rural Harvey County.
Those strategies focus on building strong relationships between students, families and staff; extensive professional development and using data to develop appropriate interventions for students who struggle. They also include attending to social, emotional and mental health; emphasizing early childhood programs and holding high academic expectations.
“We take each child as they come to us,” said ELL teacher Martin. “Every child is different. We assess them, we figure out where their needs are and that's where we begin. Then, Chantay jumps on board (for special education), I jump on board (for language learners), or whoever else is needed jumps on board and we find out the specific needs of that child.”
"I think one thing that helps with our success is that the district provides such good professional development,” said Principal Burgess. This includes addressing student trauma, investing in counselors and a behavioral health specialist.
Christina Martin agreed on the importance of continued teacher training to help students.” We are zoning in on each child's confidence or level on specific standards. So, if they're not meeting the standard, the teacher will continue to work on that standard until the student gets it. It's not an ABC grade where you get an overall average grade. You have to meet the each of the standards that grade level.”
Like other Blue Ribbon schools, Morris Hill leaders credit the Kansas State Department of Education’s Multi-Tier System of Support and Alignment program (MTSS), with providing the framework for identifying and giving additional support to the students.
The goal is to have each student demonstrate a mastering of key academic standards before moving on to middle and high school.
Early intervention is crucial because the need for remedial work in high school will limit students from experiencing other class offerings.
I suggested that while most people would probably agree with the goal of getting students to certain standards at benchmark levels, how can that really be enforced?
Eggleston said, “I give you two examples. We created a policy last year addressing student participation in extracurricular activities and or clubs. A student must maintain a 2.0 GPA each semester. We also said that if anyone, grades K-12, has missed excessive days, we will recommend the student(s) attend summer school utilizing our MTSS process.
“So, this is letting the data drive our decisions and reinforcing what we believe children need in order to be successful.”
Eggleston noted the policy has been controversial with some. “But we are not here for a program. We're here for children.”
“It's a productive struggle,” injected Principal Burgess,” and it's okay to have a productive struggle.”
As I did at each other Blue Ribbon school, I asked about the current controversy over social emotional learning, and the concerns that “non-academic” issues are harming rather than helping improving academics.
“One of the things we first have to do is create a safe place for our students.” said Eggleston. “We try to help our parents understand it is not ‘brainwashing,’ but basically trying to help students have those ‘soft’ skills, to regulate their own emotions to be successful in any setting.”
Like every other school I visited, Morris Hill leaders say today’s children bring unprecedented challenges, largely due to different parenting styles and the impact of technology and social media that expose students to adult issues at much younger ages. What may affect a small number of children can affect many others.
"I feel like sometimes parents aren't sure or don’t know what their child is watching,” said special education teacher Chantay Caron. “Or if they do know, that’s their business at home. But then I have kids coming to school talking about what they watched or heard with other kids. And we have to explain, this isn’t OK at school. Maybe it's OK at home, but not here.”
One thing all school leaders agree helps is prekindergarten early childhood education, which is in short supply in the area. There are limited number of preschool slots in district schools at no cost, and other programs in the community are too expensive for many families.
“We have three preschool classes now (at Morris Hill) and will hopefully expand,” said Principal Burgess. “These programs support a lot of social learning. There is how to share, how to respond if you don't like something that somebody did or said, how to ‘use your words versus hands.’ How to problem solve together.”
Superintendent Eggleston said “We just proposed to our board the idea and option of building an early childhood center with 32 classrooms that would allow us to serve a larger percentage of our underserved three- and four-year-olds. That gives us an opportunity to intervene early, teach those soft skills, introduce academic skills to students prior to going into kindergarten and first grade. So, we're just going to make it a priority, it's free to our families, and that means we're going to have to let something go. That's just the bottom line.”
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