SIA Annual Report November 2022
2021-22 was the first year of the Student Investment Account biennial funding and this allowed for Amity School District to continue with a number of added supports and supplements to various programs and support systems for our students.
- The 2020-21 school year was challenging as the response to Covid changed how we were able to interact with students. Due to the cost of personnel and material goods, we have to prioritize which strategies and activities we would implement.
- Our top focus remains the funding of the Building Trades Program including covering the cost of a teacher/CTE director (one person) and continuing to provide adequate materials and supplies for this program. This program is reaching several of our focal populations and is delivering on the promise of equipping our students for careers after school.
- We were able to add several classroom sets of Chromebooks, replacing aging machines, giving students more effective access to instructional materials.
- After the first of the year, we began to extend our instruction to a couple of Fridays per month, focusing on those students who were falling behind, struggling to turn in assignments or stay engaged. This benefitted a significant number of students, including those in multiple focal populations, and resulted in less deficiencies than we would have seen without such an opportunity.
- At the high school level, we added equipment to both the Art program and Physical Education, enabling more students to have access to these valuable experiential programs. Both programs serve a variety of subgroups.
- We updated the Middle School STEM equipment, which benefits all students in grades 7 and 8, as it is a required course.
- Beginning in the second semester, we were able to add a part-time MS Art teacher and an ES Science Specialist. These are positions that impact all students in those grades and that will continue into Year 2 of the biennium and hopefully beyond.
Overall we increased the amount of attention individual students were able to get between adding personnel, increasing some contact hours and offering more educational opportunities for all of our students.
- The most significant challenge was probably just trying to balance adding educational opportunities and supports for students while our staff is struggling with morale that is negatively impacted by the detrimental changes to the educational system due to Covid restrictions. It is often hard to motivate staff to put in extra hours (even when compensated) when they are already feeling burnt out. When masking restrictions were lifted, our staff was re-energized to serve students in summer academic and enrichment programs. The masking environment truly seemed to wear out staff and dampen enthusiasm of staff and students alike. Another challenge, ironically, was the overlapping
grant objectives of SIA and ESSER monies. This created confusion at times, trying to figure out which spending was coming from which pot of money and what the needed accountability for each looked like.
- Our cultural liaison has been able to stay in relatively good contact with our Hispanic community and our Special Education teachers worked hard to effectively serve their students. The administration has regularly sent our email communications to parents to try and keep them connected, encouraging them to ask questions and be involved at the schools as much as possible.. Staff also reached out regularly to at-risk student populations to try and keep them as engaged as possible. We have also used Back-to-School family activities to help parents feel more comfortable connecting personally with the teachers and administration.
We will be engaging in a new community survey this winter as part of the Integrated Planning process.
- When making decisions about where resources needed to go, we continually referenced back to our community surveys and other engagement activities to ensure we are consistent with the priorities established by our community and students.