2017-2018 Merry Oaks International Academy School Improvement Plan Report
School Improvement Plan
2017-2018
School Improvement Plans remain in effect for two years, but a School Leadership Team may amend as often as necessary or appropriate.
Draft Due: October 3, 2017 / Final Copy Due: October 17, 2017Merry Oaks Contact Information
School: / Merry Oaks International Academy / Courier #: / 453
Address: / 3508 Draper Avenue / Phone Number: / 980-343-6422
Charlotte, NC 28205 / Fax Number: / 980-343-6505
Learning Community: / NELC / School Website: /
Principal: / Brittany Slagle
Learning Community Superintendent: / Charity Bell
Merry Oaks International Academy School Improvement Team Membership
From GS §115C-105.27: “The principal of each school, representatives of the assistant principals, instructional personnel, instructional support personnel, and teacher assistants assigned to the school building, and parents of children enrolled in the school shall constitute a school improvement team to develop a school improvement plan to improve student performance. Representatives of the assistant principals, instructional personnel, instructional support personnel, and teacher assistants shall be elected by their respective groups by secret ballot....Parents serving on school improvement teams shall reflect the racial and socioeconomic composition of the students enrolled in that school and shall not be members of the building-level staff.”
Committee Position / Name / Email Address / Date Elected
Principal / Brittany Slagle / / 8/30/2017
Assistant Principal Representative / Pamela Bland-Bostick / / 8/30/2017
Dean Representative / Kylene Collins / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Karen Lovins / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Dawn Piccirillo / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Jayme Diehl / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Amanda Wrinn / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Robert Walton / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Madison Brown / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Dawn Mills / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Jasmine Davis / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / April Webb / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Faceta McDuffie / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Keara Williams / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Ronald Monroe / / 8/30/2017
Teacher Representative / Chelsea Domino / / 8/30/2017
Parent Advocate / Jon Landon / / 8/30/2017
PTA President / Linda Davis / / 8/30/2017
Parent Representative / Angela Watkins / / 8/30/2017
Parent Representative / Petra Zettl / / 8/30/2017
Vision Statement
District: CMS provides all students the best education available anywhere, preparing every child to lead a rich and productive life.
School:Growing Mighty Oaks.
Mission Statement
District: The mission of CMS is to maximize academic achievement by every student in every school.
School:At Merry Oaks, we provide a quality education by inspiring a lifelong love for learning.
Merry Oaks Shared Beliefs
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2017-2018 Merry Oaks International Academy School Improvement Plan Report
- All students can and will learn.
- Our families and our community are an essential part of our success.
- Diversity and talents will be value and celebrated.
- Teachers will provide purposeful instruction with high expectations for themselves and their students.
- We meet the needs of each child, each day.
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2017-2018 Merry Oaks International Academy School Improvement Plan Report
Merry Oaks SMART Goals
●Provide a duty free lunch period for every teacher on a daily basis.
●Provide duty free instructional planning for every teacher under G.S.>115C-105.27 and 201.1 with the goal of providing an average of at least five planning times per week, to the maximum extent that the safety and proper supervision of students may allow during the regular student contact hours.
●Provide a positive school climate, under CMS regulation JICK-R, by promoting a safe learning environment free of bullying and harassing behaviors.
●Increase college and career proficiency for grades 3-5on the NC Reading End of GradeTest from 23.39% to 30% and meet or exceed growth as measured by EVAAS. Increase reading proficiency in K-2 from an average of 58% to 75% as measured by Reading 3D TRC (Total Reading Comprehension) Assessment
●Increase college and career proficiency for grades 3-5 on the NC Math End of Grade Test from 55.93% to 60% and meet or exceed growth as measured by EVAAS.
●Increase college and career proficiency for 5th grade science on the NC Science End of Grade Test from 53.26% to 60% and meet or exceed growth as measured by EVAAS.
Merry Oaks Assessment Data Snapshot
Merry OaksProfile
Merry Oaks Elementary School is a Title I Pre-Kindergarten through 5th grade elementary school serving approximately 666 diverse students in Charlotte’s Eastside community. We are located in the Historic Merry Oaks Neighborhood, bordered by Central Avenue and Eastway Drive. Our community is home to both native Charlotteans, new arrivals from across the United States, as well as a growing immigrant and refugee population. Our students come from many countries such as: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Colombia, Congo, Republic of Congo, Cuba, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Nepal, Puerto Rico, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, United States of America, and Vietnam. Approximately,51.7% of our students are English Language Learners. We believe that the richness of our students' native languages and cultures are an asset to our school community. We are proud to learn from and about our unique and diverse student population. At Merry Oaks Elementary School, teachers are striving to make a difference in the lives of children who face the challenges associated with limited English language proficiency and socioeconomic status in the city of Charlotte. Merry Oaks provides the unique opportunity to engage with a truly diverse student body that serves a high population of English Learners. Our school is recognized in the highest tier of poverty (Tier 4) with more than 95% of our students as Economically Disadvantaged.
Description of School and Student Services: Merry Oaks International Academy provides educational programming for students in pre-kindergarten through 5th grade. The Pre-K through 5th grade staff is committed to focusing on a Balanced Literacy approach for all students in grades K-5 using the Teachers College-Readers and Writers Workshop Model. The math department also follows the workshop structure. This model allows us to provide solid instruction for all students according to their instructional text level to develop the stages of reading.
Merry Oaks uses a combination of self-contained and departmentalized classes to allow for high-quality daily instruction. In addition, Merry Oaks has implemented an Intervention/Enrichment block (WIN-What I Need) during the day to differentiate our instruction to meet the needs of the diverse learners in our building in the areas of math and literacy. Merry Oaks teachers meet in Professional Learning Communities each week to collaborate on student learning and instruction.
The School Improvement Team-School Leadership Team meets once a month to facilitate the collection and analysis of data to monitor student achievement in order to ensure implementation based on research based practices. The School Improvement Team will work collaboratively with the math, reading, and school climate to monitor the data and assess our needs.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the current program for improving the education of low achieving students: Merry Oaks has shown tremendous progress over the past two years as a Title I school and continues to strive for continuous school improvement. The level of effectiveness of Merry Oaks has increased significantly as evidenced by improving the school's letter grade from a D to a C and earning a state letter grade of a B in 3-5 overall math. As of the 2015-2016 school year, our school is no longer on the North Carolina low performing list. We also exceeded EVAAS growth in all areas. During the 2016-2017 school year, we finished the year again exceeding growth according to EVAAS as well as earned the school report card grade—C. According to performance data from the 2016-2017 school year, 54.1% of Merry Oaks 3rd-5th grade students were proficient in both reading and math as measured by the End of Grade Assessments Overall Composite.
Priority Need Areas for the Core Instructional Program:
Limited English Proficient Students: There is a significant gap in reading between LEP students and the entire school body. Last year, only 25.1% CCR and 37.8% GLP students were considered proficient. Additionally, ACCESS data shows that we exited 6 student or 3.6% of our LEP population from ESL services. This year Merry Oaks has 319 LEP students or 51.7% of our population. Limited English Proficient student language proficiency is as follows:
Level 1 / Level 2 / Level 3 / Level 4 / Level 5 / Level 619 / 50 / 114 / 27 / 0 / 0
We also have approximately 44 newly LEP identified Kindergarten students. We have identified that many of our LEP students fail to exit ESL services due to low performance in writing.
Small Group Instruction: Through observations and staff discussions, the effectiveness of small group instruction can be enhanced by providing increased support and training for teachers and support staff around strategy groups and guided reading. Teachers, teacher assistants, and Title I Tutors will receive training and support with guided reading and strategy group instruction based upon student performance data. Merry Oaks uses a push in model staffed by two Title I tutors, specialized reading and math teacher coaches, and Instructional Assistants to provide more intensive, daily instruction for students not at grade level.
Individual Instruction: Teachers, assistants, and Title I tutors will receive training and support to increase the effectiveness of individual instruction, differentiation, and conferring. Struggling learners will receive weekly support and conferring to address small learning challenges and provide additional instruction to support their growth in literacy and math.
Math Workshop: To support our goal of increasing student math proficiency, Merry Oaks will implement a 60 minute math workshop each day. Teachers will use quarterly formative assessments, weekly common standards aligned assessments, and MAP math data to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our individual students. Students will be divided into small instructional groups to focus on providing interventions or enrichment instruction to meet their individual needs. ELL, Special Education, and Title I Staff will collaborate and support the classroom teachers in the implementation.
School Improvement Strategies: Currently, Merry Oaks International Academy offers the following interventions to meet the diverse needs of our learners:
●LLI: Merry Oaks utilizes Fountas and Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) curriculum in our general population, ELL and EC programs. Leveled Literacy Intervention, funded through Title I, is a research-based program that provides targeted small group instruction to meet the needs of students performing significantly below grade level expectations in reading. Merry Oaks uses the program to support the lowest achieving students in each grade level. The LLI program compliments our balanced literacy initiatives and supports student learning in decoding, fluency, comprehension, and writing. We have designed a daily word work/English Language Arts intervention period to provide LLI for our students. Students will work with our literacy facilitators, our Title I tutor, and Teacher Assistants to improve their performance as readers. The groups will consist of no more than four students to ensure targeted instruction. The instructional team will meet to determine which students are served and assess the progress and fidelity of the program.
●Letterland: Letterland, funded through Title I, is a unique, phonics-based approach to teaching reading, writing and spelling to 3-8 year olds. The Letterland characters transform plain black letter shapes into child-friendly pictograms and they all live in an imaginary place called Letterland. It uses simple stories about the Letterland characters, explain the full range of dry phonics facts so that children are motivated to listen, to think and to learn. These stories explain letter sounds & shapes, allowing children to progress quickly to word building, reading and writing. The use of characters and actions to teach phonics is supported by scientific research. The Letterland system is also in line with research on memory and the way we learn. Each Letterland character has a personality and lives in a realistic environment filled with alliterative objects. By integrating phonics with life experience, they provide children with a systematic and motivating framework for learning all 44 sounds and their spellings and for developing full literacy. Merry Oaks uses this program in K-2nd grade.
●Words Their Way: Words their Way, funded through a district initiative pilot and Title I, aligns students’ spelling development into the following five research-based stages. This developmental model recognizes the synchronous nature of reading, writing, and spelling, and has identified common characteristics of readers, writers, and spellers along the literacy continuum. This is currently used throughout K-5th grade at Merry Oaks during the WIN block.
●Intervention / Enrichment Block for Reading and Math: Merry Oaks K-4 provides a 45 minute Intervention/Enrichment Block for Math and Reading every day. All staff (teachers, facilitators, and assistants) work collaboratively to provide target small group and individual instruction to meet student learning needs. Staff uses Universal Screening tools, Unit Assessments, and formative assessments to divide their students to meet their individual needs. Staff monitors their students’ progress moving students as needed and when they change their academic focus. The WIN Block is supported and funded by the District.
●Subject Specialization: 3rd - 5th grade classes: Students in 3rd grade through 5th grade receive specialized instruction in the content area subjects. Teachers were selected to teach reading and writing or math and science based upon prior assessment data. This strategy provides opportunities for teachers to specialize in a single subject and increase their content knowledge and pedagogy skills while meeting student learning needs.
●Inquiry Implementation: The teachers are working on creating rigorous plans to engage student learning and meet the science and social studies on each grade level. The delivery of instruction allows students to question and wonder, in order to give purpose for their learning. Students have tasks, and real world problems that they are asked to solve using inquiry and research skills. Each inquiry lesson also has a reading component, to apply reading strategies to nonfiction text, which supports our school wide effort in increasing student reading proficiency.
●Instructional Support for Teachers: This year, Merry Oaks has five instructional coaches and interventionists to support high quality professional learning and support for all teachers in K-5.
Highly Qualified Staff: The faculty of Merry Oaks is dedicated to supporting the academic success of all students. Each member of the faculty and staff brings a wide variety of skills and experiences to the school setting, creating a warm and motivating environment for learning. We have an ADM allotment of 4 Pre-K teachers, 32 K-5 teachers, 2 EC teacher, 4.5 ESL teachers as well as an allotment for Physical Education/Health, Art, and Music totaling 48 certified teachers. We share our Speech-Language Pathologist and Psychologist with other CMS schools. Additionally, we have 8 Instructional Assistants, 2 secretaries, 4 part-time Title I funded Tutors, 1 parent advocate, and 1 BMT. Our instructional leadership team is comprised of a principal, an assistant principal, one Deans of Instruction, and five specialized coaches (literacy and math).
Merry Oaks has 100% highly qualified staff members. In the event that a staff member is not highly qualified, parents of the affected class are notified every four weeks of the status. The administration works with human resources to help teachers meet needed requirements to be highly qualified. Merry Oaks also has several staff members that are bilingual and offer support to the Spanish speaking community represented in the school population. The Student Services staff consists of a part-time school psychologist, social worker, two school counselors, and one Communities in Schools Site Coordinator.
The North Carolina School Report Card is sent home with every student which outlines the highly qualified staff at Merry Oaks. In addition, it is presented at the annual Title I Meeting. During long term absences of Highly Qualified teachers, we work together as a professional learning community and with the human resources department to replace them with a highly qualified substitute. In the event that this is not possible a letter is sent home to all parents affected from the principal. Merry Oaks sends home the parents Right to Know letter in the fall and spring of every year.
Teacher Recruitment and Placement
Recruitment Efforts and Strategies: The administration of Merry Oaks accepts teacher resumes throughout the school year should a vacancy occur. Merry Oaks administration works to receive references from effective teachers to recruit new team members.
Teacher Retention Activities:Merry Oaks administration uses several activities to gauge teacher morale and satisfaction with working conditions. Throughout the year, teachers complete a school climate survey that provides information on key aspects of school operations, school leadership, student behavior, and teacher morale. The principal/assistant principal meets with teachers in January and May to complete mid-year and end of year conferences. During these individual conferences the teacher, principal and assistant principal meet to discuss job performance, student achievement and issues that arise throughout the school year. These conferences are very teacher specific and help to guide the administration team as they prepare for the upcoming school year as to the best placement for teachers and students. During these meetings the administrative team listens openly and encourages teachers to do the same. This process has been very effective in developing relationships with staff members and determining the long term goals and aspirations of teachers. It is also a great venue to discover morale issues and areas in which we can improve the culture of our school.