by Mary Loden
maryloden@clreporter.com
At the Clear Lake Community School District’s monthly board meeting on Sept. 12 Superintendent Doug Gee highlighted the district’s educational goals for the 2023-24 school year. He pointed out that Clear Lake was already well above the Iowa state averages in some categories.
Gee said there have been some dramatic improvements over the course of the last four years. Last year’s goal was to have all grade levels at 80 percent proficient in English Language Arts, with a 2 percent growth in any grade level that had already achieved the goal. By the end of the school year five out of nine grade levels had hit the mark and one grade had increased their scores by 2 percent. Those same goals have been carried over to the 2023-24 school year, with the ultimate goal of having every grade level achieve an 80 percent or higher testing score.
The Clear Lake district began teaching a new math curriculum last year which had Gee and the teachers a little concerned about that year’s Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP) scores. “We switched to Illustrative Math (IM) for grades K-8 and it was a lot for our teachers to learn and implement. As you can see from the ISASP results…our students have done a really good job making the transition to the new math curriculum,” he said.
Gee had wanted to see all grade levels at 70 percent of the state average for math and his students surpassed that goal. “We now have eight out of nine [grades] at 70 percent and two out of five, that were [already] at 70 percent, grew by at least 2 percent,” he said. The district’s new 2023-24 goal is all grades at 80 percent, an 8.4 percent increase over the last four years.
“The other one that I’m really happy with is science. Science is continuing to grow,” Gee said. “I think that’s a lot to do with that ‘Project Lead the Way’ stuff we’re doing. So we’re going to continue to see some huge growth in the science area.”
The Clear Lake district didn’t have any grade even at the 70 percent proficient level, but due to newer science programming and projects every grade had surpassed the 70 percent mark and this year’s goal was bumped up to an 80 percent proficiency level.
“This is where we should be, and we want to be, but we’ve continued to widen that gap (between district and state standard testing scores) a little bit,” Gee said.
Another agenda item was the approval of members for the District Book Review Committee. The library book policy for all school districts in Iowa changed over the summer when Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law which puts restrictions on school libraries for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
The libraries can only have books deemed “age-appropriate,” which excludes any materials with “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” The law requires teachers and administrators to review their libraries and classrooms for books of this type and remove them. School employees found to be in repeated violation of some of these provisions could face disciplinary action after Jan. 1, 2024.
Instead of just pulling books from the shelves, Gee appointed a six-member reconsideration committee to review a book in question. “…for the policy we had to have a reconsideration committee. Hopefully we won’t have to use them. But if somebody would challenge a book, they would be taken to [this committee.]” he said.
The book reconsideration committee includes: High School Assistant Principal Jake Morris as the administrator of the group; Clear Lake school district librarian Alana Jara; 5th grade teacher Sarah Christian; and one parent from each building, Dani Gansen, Rachelle Moeller, and Heather Englin.
