• Category 2

    Selected in 2017

  • Grades: pre k - 4
    School Setting: suburban
    Town Population: 12,679
    Student Enrollment: 1,101
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 18.4%
    White/Caucasian: 65%
    Hispanic: 8.3%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.9%
    Asian: 3.9%
    Native American: 3.4%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:17
    % Reduced Lunch: 62%
    % ELL Learners: 7.6%
    Founded: 1994
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Shelley Ritz
  • CONTACT:
    539 F. Edward Hebert Blvd.
    Belle Chasse, LA 70037
    504-595-6620
    sritz@ppsb.org
Belle Chasse Primary School
Belle Chasse, LA
Collaboration is at the heart for all decisions made for each child.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
Our monthly Parent Teacher Organization meetings were extremely small in attendance and full of boredom. Whether it is because of parents working, limited time, the pressure of a school environment, or the inability to have their children complete homework, parents were not coming to the scheduled meetings. This year we made a significant change to the monthly meeting and called it PTO Family Night. Parents with their children are invited to the gym for an eventful night around a theme. The themes and dates published and are promoted as a fun night for the parents and kids to “play”: Bella’ Wheel of Fortune, Family Fitness Night, Minute to Win It, etc. Each of the Family Nights has 40-45minutes of games, music, laughter, a healthy snack, and 15-20 minutes of agenda business. The agenda business is condensed and often used as a means to communicate about student learning. The meetings grew from ten parents to about hundred because the children want to come play.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
Two critical tenets of leadership during change or improvement are trust & commitment. This begins with my responsibility to create an organized operational environment that runs smoothly & efficiently. Belle Chasse Primary has a reputation for having a policy & procedure for everything. As procedures or expectations are adjusted, collaborative discussions are done in committees: curriculum committee, support services, PBIS, fundraising committee, scheduling committee, school improvement team, etc. Meetings are scheduled quarterly to reflect upon hard & soft data. I attend many of the meetings to assure the decisions are in alignment with the vision of BCP. Leadership team meets twice a month and works to enforce the decisions established & agreed upon by the faculty are implemented & maintained. I believe an important piece in leadership is done through my weekly reflective letters, messages, & notes to the faculty about instruction, learning walks observations, management, etc.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
Guiding a large faculty of staff, everyone will always be at a different level professionally. Because of this, I have to provide scaffolding for teacher learning. Some teachers were apprehensive, but I asked for their trust and to be risk-takers with me on this professional journey. In order to build capacity, learning walks evolved into a process that included teachers, both high performing and struggling teachers.. This was a powerful time to question, highlight, and make intentional comments for clarifying meaning and make instructional adjustments. The learning walk team of the day met after to discuss "what was done well" and next steps. The teachers' voices were used to do the redelivery of results. I knew I had to become the central cohesive source of support and stability for the teacher, and we had plenty of discourse. However, it became a collective agreement of our learning walks to reevaluate practices as they related to elements of good instruction.

Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Collaboration is at the heart for all decisions that are made for each child. This process is an ongoing is evidenced in many different ways and begins during the summer with careful placement for each student based upon the child's previous academic growth, social development, & teachers' strengths within the grade level.. At the beginning of every year, the teacher is provided with a “Data Binder” which is a comprehensive collection that has summative hard & soft data on each child. This binder is updated throughout the year with interval assessments, grades, etc. This binder is brought to every intervention meeting on Fridays. All intervention groups are flexible & are scrutinized each quarter to assure every child is in the right group. We also conduct “D/F Meetings” after each quarter. Every teacher is required to collaborate with the counselor & administrator to scrutinize possible causes of the student's lack of progress & make adjustments for the child's instruction.

Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
Aligning curriculum with standards, developing deep, rigorous instruction, & designing common assessments is extremely hard work, & the teachers and staff of Belle Chasse Primary (BCP) have learned to do it only by doing the hard work. BCP's faculty & staff are a community of learners who have built upon habits of continuous improvement in teaching & student learning by reading professional text by Fisher & Frey, Mike Schmoker, Maria Nichols, Carol Dweck’, etc. We have read & discussed at curriculum meetings, PLCs & faculty meetings with the purpose of clarifying what powerful teaching & learning looks & sounds like. As a faculty, we studied & implemented many new practices as a result of the on-going professional readings. It has become mandatory at the end of every school year that the staff receives a professional text in which we will conduct book talks, Moodle threads, or an email threads throughout the summer to set the tone for our learning for the next school year.
Stats
  • Category 2

    Selected in 2017

  • Grades: pre k - 4
    School Setting: suburban
    Town Population: 12,679
    Student Enrollment: 1,101
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 18.4%
    White/Caucasian: 65%
    Hispanic: 8.3%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.9%
    Asian: 3.9%
    Native American: 3.4%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:17
    % Reduced Lunch: 62%
    % ELL Learners: 7.6%
    Founded: 1994
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Shelley Ritz
  • CONTACT:
    539 F. Edward Hebert Blvd.
    Belle Chasse, LA 70037
    504-595-6620
    sritz@ppsb.org