BASD board members heard updates on the “Reading by Grade 3” (RBG3) and secondary emotional support programs, as well as a second reading of the updated gifted student policy, at the curriculum committee meeting March 9. The board will vote to finalize the gifted policy March 23. The facilities committee reviewed a host of items, from transportation to maintenance contracts to LANTA bus passes, during its portion of the agenda.

Prior to the meeting, Mark James, supervisor of professional learning for the district, spoke with the Press about BASD’s readiness for potential school closures related to the coronavirus epidemic. Earlier in the day, Superintendent Dr. Joseph Roy had announced that Dr. Jack Silva is leading the Educational Programs Department’s contingency plans. James confirmed that for middle and high school students in particular, the district’s use of Schoology and DiscoveryEd online course materials and the one-Chromebook-per-student initiative rolled out this year mean that the tools are already in place for what he calls “unwalled instruction.” Elementary education would not be quite as simple a transition, and would likely involve some pencil-and-paper work, as well as potentially including live instruction via the BASD-TV cable access channel. James emphasized that district staff are considering these options as contingency measures at present, and may not need to be deployed.

The district’s professional development efforts continue, as Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jack Silva explained. First grade teachers have recently received phonics training, and second and third grade teachers and principals have been learning advanced decoding and morphology, crucial skills in reading instruction. All district kindergarten students demonstrated improvement on Acadience reading tests from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year; all but three first grades and all but two second grades showed improvement over this same span.

Three district schools – Broughal MS, Freedom HS, and Liberty HS – receive secondary itinerant emotional support through a district program that pairs “high expectations” and “high supports.” This program is a change from the typical situation prior to the 2011-12 academic year; under the old model, students with behavioral challenges received emotional support in a self-contained classroom, rather than being instructed with their peers. Graduation rates of students with emotional support needs have dramatically improved since the introduction of the program, from lower than 10 percent to consistently greater than 50 percent.

Chief Facilities Officer Mark Stein informed the board that without borrowing, the district will only be able to execute one of the HVAC replacements planned for the summer of 2021. The district has chosen not to borrow, and will allot $5 million of capital reserve funds to perform the upgrade at Farmersville ES, and will defer the Freemansburg ES HVAC replacement until 2022. Farmersville was selected to go first because of the school’s history of air quality issues, including closures for mold in recent years.

Jenny Casebolt presented a midyear update on behalf of TransPar, the consulting firm engaged to advise the district on busing. One notable accomplishment is the implementation of an incident management system, including a call center and tracking for reported incidents and complaints. TransPar also audited the entire district transportation department, from maintenance to recruiting to payroll. Safety and student management are two areas in which BASD was already doing a good job; TransPar advised the district to consider paid training to improve its driver recruitment, and is currently implementing Routefinder Pro routing software to improve bus route efficiency.

The board will vote on landscape maintenance bids from multiple vendors on March 23, as well as voting on the re-authorization of the LANTA day pass program for secondary students. Complete documentation on these and other initiatives is available online (https://go.boarddocs.com/pa/beth/Board.nsf).