Hynes officials reviewed the school’s latest performance scores and highlighted school-wide improvement plans at its monthly board meeting, Oct 29.
Hynes’s 2011-2012 school performance score was 122.7, an ‘A” grade, and a 5.5 point gain from last year.
According to the school report by Principal Michelle Douglas, reading mastery levels at Hynes are 84 percent, up from 80 percent last year. All grades except for grade 6 showed improvement in reading levels from last year.
Douglas said a “very high” 97 percent attendance rate and a cooperative learning approach were crucial factors contributing to the school’s progress. Hynes’ Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports program (PBiS) and its bully prevention program also made positive impacts on the school’s culture, she said.
Highlights of this year’s school-wide improvement plan include:
- Quarterly teacher meetings with the school’s leadership team
- Continuous lesson planning feedback
- Extensive coaching and modeling
- Using the COMPASS Rubric and Student Learning Targets (SLTS) to improve academic performance
In other news, Douglas announced that over one hundred volunteers participated in the school’s “Give Back” day, including employees from Intuit, a national accounting software company, and St. Paul’s Homecoming Center and Vista, a local landscaping firm.
Volunteers from Intuit and St. Paul’s did about $20,000 worth of landscaping work, according to Douglas.
Furthermore, Intuit CEO Brad Smith pledged to build a playground at Hynes estimated to cost $50,000.
Facilities work is set to begin on a school fence that was damaged during Hurricane Isaac. The total cost for that will be about $2400.
Lastly, representatives from the accounting firm Silva Gurtner & Abney gave Hynes a clean bill of health on its finances. Hynes’s net assets for 2012 currently total $3.15 million, up from $2.76 million last year.
The 45-minute meeting was then adjourned.