Progress

BASD continues strong into 2024

BELLEFONTE -- The Bellefonte Area School District has had a tremendous year so far and is continuing strong.

The district is working through many changes that will be occurring throughout the upcoming year and some further in the future. Some of these include: updating its online learning options, breaking ground on a new elementary school, changing over its website and communications system, offering adult educational courses and hiring a new superintendent.

Curriculum review and rewrite are also happening with the English Language Arts (ELA) and Health and Physical Education courses.

STEM continues to be an area that the district continues to infuse into all curriculum areas.

The district is also working on a new Comprehensive Plan for the 2024-2027 school years.

The entire district listened to two incredible guest speakers this year.

In August, Dr. Adolph Brown verbalized to staff the importance of teaching, creating relationships, unpacking their backpacks and believing in their students and themselves.

In January, LeDerick Horne spoke about growing up with a learning disability and the importance of not creating a predetermined mindset based upon those individual's factors.

Each of the district's buildings are working hard to achieve goals that were created at the beginning of the school year. These goals are something that are continuously discussed and evaluated throughout the year and most will continue into the following school year.

Much of this involves developing protocols for analyzing district, school, classroom and individual student data to identify learning gaps and inform instruction and interventions. It also includes increasing partnerships with various outside entities to assist and support students, their families and staff.

At the Bellefonte Area High School, the district is working with its ELA teachers as a part of their curriculum writing process this year. The department is continuing to work on revising and aligning curriculum, focusing on writing and literacy.

Across the building, departments are continuing to add constructed response activities to class to increase writing skills, along with adding more content-related literacy opportunities.

The high school data team continues to review student data regularly to make adjustments to class activities and assessments.

The high school is also working to provide students with more opportunities to learn about post high school options. Every month, teachers are working with their homeroom students to explore post-secondary options along with chances to listen to career speakers in a variety of job positions.

Teachers continue to hold individual conferences with students several times per year to review their current and future goals and help give direction towards opportunities to meet those goals.

At the Bellefonte Area Middle School, the building is utilizing available resources and data to make informed decisions regarding instruction, curriculum and assessments. This includes using MAP assessment data, PSSA/Keystone data, classroom assessments and other forms of benchmarking. Teachers meet regularly throughout the year with the administration and the coaches to make necessary adjustments to curriculum and instruction.

Within each department, they have created goals that will align to the district and building goals. The purpose of these goals is for each department to provide specific support in their content area towards the goals. This includes the creation and use of common assessments, PSSA look-alike questions and the consistent utilization of constructed responses in their lessons.

Lastly, the staff have been addressing Future Ready Skills for the students throughout lessons that occur several times a month. These lessons focus on career exploration and priority skills so that they will be better prepared for high school and beyond.

At the elementary level, each building also has a set of building goals related to student achievement.

At Bellefonte Elementary, the building has goals relating to student achievement as well as the social emotional growth and well being of our students and adults. The building uses data to identify each goal and has worked collaboratively to identify specific action steps to achieve those goals. The staff has worked hard to align its time and resources with these goals and have monitored the progress through the first half of the year.

Currently, the building is in the process of evaluating the mid-year data and meeting with grade levels and departments to reflect on progress and plan for any changes that the data shows are necessary for the second half of the year.

At Benner Elementary, they are focusing on data this year and have formed a building level data team that has been leading the direction on what should be focused upon for the needs of their students. Benner is continuing to implement the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) in their building and is utilizing data to direct placement in the available instructional groups. They have also worked hard on revising their current safety plan to train students and staff how to react in case of an emergency.

At Pleasant Gap Elementary, they too are continuing to implement and advance the MTSS framework for the benefit of their students across the school. The staff is also working to increase the use of data across the school in order to meet the needs of the students. Pleasant Gap has created and implemented a building data team to evaluate school wide data to determine areas of curricular needs. Over the past several years, Pleasant Gap has been able to implement reading and math interventions to improve student growth.

At Marion-Walker Elementary, each grade level has set academic growth and achievement goals. Each grade looked at how they could contribute to increasing writing skills based on standards, local assessments and PSSA scores. With mid-year data just in, the building is looking at student growth and achievement specifically in math and reading and setting goals as educators as well as with students. As a building, the staff also set a goal to increase the health and wellness of students. Teachers are conducting daily check-ins and focusing on making students feel welcome and connected at school.

The Bellefonte eLearning Academy (BeLA) is striving to implement in-house English courses that are taught by the district's own high school English teachers, rather than through another program. The focus is to add Text Dependent Analysis (TDA) structure to the online learning process, which involves using the text to help support evidence. BeLA instructors are also incorporating MAP one on one conferencing with sophomore students to help guide their educational journey.

The Bellefonte Area School District staff continues to strive to be the best they can for their students. The student experience and their growth is top priority and will remain important as we move through the continuation of the school year and move into the next.