Marshall County Board of Education Sets Goals for 2024-25 School Year
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The Marshall County Board of Education and Superintendent Shelby Haines laid out their main three goals for the coming school year.
Haines presented the objectives during Tuesday night's meeting: increasing professional development opportunities, increasing student achievement and increasing community and parent involvement in the school system.
To increase professional development opportunities, Haines wanted to continue creating more professional development opportunities for service personnel. She noted this would include school employees such as instructional aides, bus drivers and cooks, who "interact with the students every day."
"I think what is unique about our county is that we offer so much training for our service personnel," Haines said. "Until last year, we only trained service personnel during the day. We've started having kindergarten aides go to kindergarten training with teachers because they are instructional support and need to know what's happening."
Board members agreed with the first goal, with board member Christie Robinson adding she had already seen the benefits from last year's expansion of service personnel opportunities.
"You can't even calculate how much less my phone heats up with calls, emails or texts now with people complaining service personnel have nothing to do now compared to when you started (increasing service personnel opportunities)," Robinson said.
On the second goal of increasing student achievement, Haines noted that West Virginia Benchmark Assessments, the West Virginia General Summative Assessment and AP test scores would still be used to track student progress.
"We know there are a couple of areas that we have to target based on the AP test scores and the feedback we've gotten from principals regarding the benchmark assessments," Haines said. "We've met with principals and are getting a plan to target those areas."
Robinson noted that while the board could not actively increase student achievement, it would still serve as an oversight body when presented with various test scores. Haines agreed with the distinction, adding that she would play the role in increasing achievement with the board serving as a form of oversight to monitor student progress.
"A third grader is being successful on a test because the third grader is doing the work their third-grade teacher taught them," Robinson said. "The notion is that we're involved, concerned and see what's going on."
For the final goal of increasing community and family involvement in the school system, Haines noted she would like to get parents involved more in the school system beyond "musicals and performances." She said this could be partly achieved by getting parents involved with extended learning activities and school training.
Regarding community support of the school system, Haines said that she wanted to focus on getting local organizations involved and aware of what was happening in the school system.
"We can't do what we do without community support, and it's important for the community to understand exactly what we do," Haines added.
Board members agreed that increasing community and family involvement and their presence at various school activities were worthwhile goals. Robinson added that board members should try to increase their presence at not only sports events and extracurricular activities but also academic events, such as social studies fairs.
After Haines ran through her suggested goals, board member Lori Kestner suggested another objective: the board should hold a workshop at least once a year. In this workshop, Kestner outlined that teachers, principals, or other Marshall County Schools employees could present presentations on topics they are well-versed in so that board members can gain an "in-depth understanding."
"We've always been able to do workshops, but maybe we could invite people in to present on a topic they are well-versed in, whether that's related to construction projects at school or something else," Kestner said. "I think an example of one would be having a principal or counselor give a presentation on poverty and how it affects our students from a first-hand account."
Haines said she could send a survey to board members to get feedback on what topics they thought they wanted to examine in-depth.
"I think it would be worthwhile to look at a topic more in-depth than just sitting around a getting a report on it," Kestner added. "We would be able to have those conversations, ask those questions, and dive into those topics that teachers or principals are passionate about."