• Category 1

    Selected in 2018

  • Grades: pre k - 5
    School Setting: rural
    Town Population: 800
    Student Enrollment: 280
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 5%
    White/Caucasian: 86%
    Hispanic: 5%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 2%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 2%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:26
    % Reduced Lunch: 65%
    % ELL Learners: 5%
    Founded: 1915
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Christopher Slone
  • CONTACT:
    418 W. Fourth St.
    Perryville, KY 40468
    859-936-7500
    christopher.slone@boyle.kyschools.us
Perryville Elementary School
Perryville, KY
Our best initiative is a two hour enrichment/intervention block.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
At Perryville Elementary we have a very strong Site Based Decision Making Council that consists of the principal, three staff members, and two parents. The staff members are elected to a two year term by the certified staff, and the parents are elected by the parent community to serve a two year term. The school’s site based decision making council is responsible for approval of the school’s scheduling, budget, and policies, as well as playing a crucial role in staff hiring. Our Parent Teacher Organization is utilized by much of our stakeholder community to provide support to both school and parent initiatives, as well as providing a venue to be involved in the success of the school and students. Perryville Elementary is constantly looking for ways that families can be involved in our school, whether through a formal program, or an alternate form of involvement. This is a community school, our community depends on our school and the school depends on our community.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
At Perryville Elementary we feel like the bedrock of learning is literacy. To encourage literacy, our school hosts several Family Reading Nights throughout the year. At our Reading Nights, our students and families are encouraged to come in pajamas and are offered a bedtime snack of milk and cookies. Community volunteers are our readers and classrooms are set up for grade level and reading levels. Students, families, and teachers all settle in to hear bedtime stories read aloud. Students are given a copy of the reading selection to follow along during story time and to have a copy at home for continued reading. Our Reading Nights have an amazing participation rate. Our community volunteer readers have included our mayor, local business leaders, state senators and representatives. Our Reading Nights have encouraged literacy and created a venue for community relationships, as well as providing additional reading resources for our families.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
At Perryville Elementary our philosophy of school change or improvement has developed primarily out of need. Our staff, students, and community prides itself on our ability to utilize data and resources to improve or change quickly to meet the needs of our students or community. The change may be instructional, or perhaps physical change is needed to remove educational barriers. Because of near constant data study, professional learning community conversations, and community relationships our school identifies a need quickly. If the stakeholders feel like a change is needed for improvement the school doesn’t wait, it changes to meet that need.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
Our top goal at Perryville Elementary is to continually remove the gap barrier for all students. Our state assessment data is showing there are no gaps in some content areas, but we feel like the gap barriers that do exist can be removed. Our staff is constantly moving to accomplish this goal. Our second goal is to continue to show a year to a year and a half growth for all students. Our philosophy is to have our students prepared for their next step in education. If we can consistently have a student grow a year to a year and a half they will be prepared for the next steps of their lives when the leave our school.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
The single most important factor in the success of our school that could be replicated is our Super Block enrichment/intervention time. With creative scheduling and staffing and minimal additional cost, a school can create an instructional avenue for students to receive instruction, intervention, and enrichment the same day. As stated in a previous question, this has had the most impact on our student achievement, and maybe the easiest to replicate.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
Our best initiative is a two hour enrichment/intervention block. This block allowed us to schedule two periods a day for enrichment or intervention. Students are assigned enrichment or intervention based on multiple sources’ data. Because our staff formatively assesses students daily, students may be assigned intervention as needed daily. If the formative assessment shows that a student is at mastery with a standard then the student will be assigned enrichment classes for both block times. Additionally, if a student is showing they need help with prerequisite skills or daily standards they will be scheduled an intervention time during this enrichment block. Lastly, the best thing about our enrichment block is our content teachers are providing the intervention during their intervention class. The teacher who provides the initial instruction is the same teacher that provides the content intervention. Perryville Elementary refers to this initiative as our Super Block.
Explain how ESEA federal funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
ESEA federal funds have been crucial to support the improvement efforts at Perryville Elementary. ESEA funds are used to provide additional certified staffing. This staffing allows our classroom levels to maintain a relatively universal number, as well as having the staff to provide intense small group instruction and support. Without the ESEA federal funds our most impactful initiatives would not be possible.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
The most critical professional development activity we use Perryville Elementary is spending three professional development days each summer to work with our grade level and content partners at our district’s other two elementary schools. During this summer curriculum day, our grade level and content teacher teams will create every learning target needed to instruct each standard. They then will create units and unit summative assessment. These common assessments will be used as summative assessments for each content unit. The teacher teams will then create target exit banks to show mastery of created targets. Teacher have access to these exit banks to formatively assess target mastery at any time. Lastly, the grade level teacher teams will quality control the targets, summative assessment, and exit banks created. This quality control is checking for standard congruency and instructional relevance.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Perryville Elementary uses multiple sources of data to improve student achievement and inform decision making. Formative assessment is monitored daily to establish the course direction for every class and is also used to establish differentiation each student needs. Summative unit district common assessments are used for this as well. Three times a year, a normed reference growth assessment is given to students to determine if students are progressing, or if there are grade level prerequisite needs that should be addressed. Lastly, we use our state assessments to determine gap areas for students to improve opportunities for growth. All of these data sources are used to determine and inform decision making to improve student achievement.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
Perryville Elementary has a strong and balanced culture of compassion, high expectations, and rigor. Our kids are loved and through that love our staff wants and expects our students to achieve at high levels. We know, an expectation of success is not enough. To achieve, our students need to be challenged and our instruction must be differentiated so that all students can have an opportunity to grow. One of the major expectations instilled at Perryville Elementary is that there is to be evidence of formative assessment daily in every content class. This evidence can be in the form of formal exit assessment or other progress monitoring devices. Simply stated, teachers must show that every instructional day was a step forward for students, or show a need for more instruction. Although this may seem simple, it’s had a huge impact on our daily expectations for teacher and students, and has certainly created a culture of content impact in our classrooms.
Stats
  • Category 1

    Selected in 2018

  • Grades: pre k - 5
    School Setting: rural
    Town Population: 800
    Student Enrollment: 280
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 5%
    White/Caucasian: 86%
    Hispanic: 5%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 2%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 2%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:26
    % Reduced Lunch: 65%
    % ELL Learners: 5%
    Founded: 1915
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Christopher Slone
  • CONTACT:
    418 W. Fourth St.
    Perryville, KY 40468
    859-936-7500
    christopher.slone@boyle.kyschools.us