Jeff Berger

Superintendent Jeff Berger proposed a Chapter 12 exemption request to the South Tama School Board on Monday, Nov. 20 at the regular board meeting. It would allow South Tama High School students to take physical education daily for one semester, in order to improve student achievement by allowing students the opportunity to enroll in more rigorous course work for the second semester.

Board members approved the request for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years.

The high school goal is to improve math and reading scores on the Iowa Assessment, the ACT and College and Career Readiness scores.

Students the second semester will have the opportunity to improve their reading and math proficiency by enrolling in additional academic challenging classes as well as allowing more time for student interventions. It will also allow students the opportunity to take additional elective offerings such as foreign language, music and arts.

South Tama’s physical education class sizes are large most hours and this will reduce class sizes because there are only two physical education teachers at the high school. Physical education will be taught everyday each week will improve students overall fitness and health. Overall this is intended to allow the students to increase the opportunity to reach their potential academically and to improve their overall fitness and health by having physical education everyday with smaller classes.

Success Results

The successful implementation in 2016-2017 school year of the Physical Education Waiver showed growth in the reading and math scores in grades nine and ten.

South Tama’s ACT Scores increased over one percent. Therefore, Berger is requesting to continue with the waiver for the 2017-2018 school year based on the indicators such as student attendance, increase in reading assessment scores, increase in rigorous course enrollment, increase graduation rate, decrease in drop outs and increase in ACT scores.

The school district will measure the success of the standards exemption plan on improving student achievement or performance by ACT Scores in reading and math and the Iowa Assessment scores in Math and Reading .

In other business:

application to the School Budget Review Committee in the amount of $7,666 for special education administrative costs was approved with Lied Center Consortium program for the 2018-19 school year.

Ben Adams, Middle School principal, gave a report on STEM, junior achievement, standards based grading. Adams started by telling of one junior high student who is fighting cancer, therefore losing a full head of hair. Adams said six students shaved their heads as well as some personnel in honor of the student. Adams felt congratulations were in order for these students.

Adams also said Junior Achievement started this year with Project Lead the Way, with additions each year. vigorous teacher training is required.

Some things included in the program of Technical and Engineering drawings are measurement with calipers, statistical analysis, custom orthotics, 3D modeling, designing and building. Much more is included in this program which was introduced by a local business owner.

Superintendent Berger gave a short review on district finances, explaining where funding comes from, and ways to compromise.

South Tama schools has k72 limited ELL students that have received instruction beyond five years it was reported. As a result the school board may request modified supplemental funds for LEP (Limited English Proficient) student instruction beyond five years in the amount of $105,874.

the Board went into a closed session to discuss the Superintendent’s contract.