District Nearly Straight-A

Five of six schools made numerical improvements and four of six schools achieved top grades. The result is that Gulf District Schools are "A" material again this year.

The district is an honor roll district again this year, ranking 29 among some 70 districts in the state as it pertains to district grades, with four schools earning "A" grades.

"We are very proud," said Superintendent of Schools Tim Wilder. "We have great teachers, administrators, paraprofessional, non-instructional personnel who do a great job.

"The grades are even more impressive given the tough times we've had this year, with the (one-mill referendum in March) and some folks not knowing if they had a job. If we can maintain those sort of grades in tough times, that is very impressive."

And the district has managed the impressive showing while the state has kept a steady chopping to the district's budget, making nearly 6 percent in funding cuts since the beginning of the school year.

But enough with the gloom, let those grades serve as sunshine for the district at the end of the 2008-09 school year.

Port St. Joe Elementary and Port St. Joe Middle schools each maintained their A grades earned last year.

In fact, this makes five of the past six years that Port St. Joe Middle School has earned an "A" and three years running that Port St. Joe Elementary has earned an "A."

Further, Port St. Joe Elementary posted an aggregate score of 594, the highest score under the current grading system any one district school has received.

In addition, the school was impressive in a key component of the grading scale, improvement by students in the lowest quartile.

Port St. Joe had some of the most impressive percentages across the board in the district, with some 60 percent of students in the lowest quartile considered to have made learning gains.

Each school receives points in each of eight categories. The highest possible point total, a perfect score, would be 800 points.

Key components among the eight "pods" are points received for learning gains among the students in the lowest quartile, testing at least 95 percent of the student population and bonus points awarded high schools for success on student retakes of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

Anything over 500 points is considered excellent, a reality backed by the fact that no district in the state scored more than 589 points.

Gulf District Schools scored an aggregate of 532 points.

Wewahitchka Elementary and Wewahitchka Middle schools fell in line with their peers, each improving a letter grade to be "A" schools.

"Wewahitchka Elementary School was our biggest gainers in terms of points," Wilder said, noting the school scored an aggregate 549 points, the second-highest in the district. "They did a great job."

Wewahitchka Middle School entered the year with an "A" on the collective brains of faculty and students.

Last year the school finished one point shy of an "A."

"They had a little motivation there this year," Wilder said. "And (principal) Pam Lister does a great job of looking through the aggregate scores and identifying areas to work on."

Wewahitchka High School, which was considered a failing school just a few short years ago, maintained their "C" grade and also showed improvement in points nearly across the board.

"They are steadily improving," Wilder said. "Science is a concern, but the numbers improved and they have good people in science there and we'll address any issues.

"The thing that is interesting is we have good staff in place, we have good students; the question each year is how do you reach those students, what is going to work? Across the district that is an interesting part of this process."

The rub, if there is one for the district, is Port St. Joe High School, which fell from an "A" school, unusual for a high school, to a "C" this year.

"Statewide at your high schools, a ‘C' is passing, lots of high schools in the state would love a ‘C', but we had a school that was an ‘A' school last year and that is a concern," Wilder said.

The key to the fall was learning gains, or in too many cases lack thereof, of students in the lowest quartile.

At least 50 percent of students in that quartile must make learning gains to for critical points, but in reading just 33 percent of such students at Port St. Joe High School made sufficient progress.

This same student population, Wilder noted, showed 61 percent making learning gains in math and the high school has the fifth-highest writing aggregate scores, 91 percent scoring at or above grade level, in the state.

Additionally, the high school put considerable resources, bringing in reading coaches, making reading a concentrated effort across all curriculums and research would indicate that reading and writing go hand-and-glove so the low achievement levels in reading are a bit baffling, Wilder said.

"We are trying to look at it," Wilder said. "These are the same kids who did well in math and you don't like to see that. We even had the state take a second look at the numbers.

"It is not a staff issue. We have basically the same staff as last year and didn't do much differently. We just have not gotten through to these 10^th graders for some reason. We are interested in finding out what we have to do. Going from a ‘C' to an ‘A' is a concern."

Overall, the district could only ask for slightly better science scores at Wewahitchka High School and better achievement in reading among students in the lowest quartile at Port St. Joe High School and six "A's" would be within reach.

"I really thought we would have six ‘A's', that was a shocker," Wilder said. "But when you have five of six schools improve, you have to be really, really proud of the employees and students of this district."