Summary Report
Executive Summary: Our district mission statement, Providing the Plain Community with exceptional education that is personalized, relevant and provides opportunities for students to create a better world through global understanding and respect, guides our daily work. The district has been able to utilize funding from the Student Wellness and Success and Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid to work towards accomplishing the goals within the district Strategic Plan. The use of these funds is designed around four overarching goals:
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Enhancing Student Wellness
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Boosting Academic Performance
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Implementing Positive Behavior Intervention Support
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Strengthening Safety and Security
This is a summary of the initiative description, outcome data, community partners and anticipated direct and indirect impact for the students within our district. As we continue to strive for excellence in all areas we believe the dollars provided through the Student Wellness and Success and Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid have benefitted our work in accomplishing the goals set forth in our Strategic Plan.
Goal 1: Enhancing Student Wellness
- Need: Tiered Services for Mental Health / School Counseling Services
- Grant Area: Student Wellness and Success
- Initiative Description: Enhancing student wellness was one of our targeted goal areas in the utilization of the Student Wellness and Success grant funding. The goal of this focus area was to provide support to our identified students of need both through school counselor support and accessibility to licensed mental health counselors. This aligns with the Plain Local School District Strategic Plan Goal: Climate and Wellness, it is our goal to create an atmosphere that celebrates healthy attitudes and decisions through providing mental health and wellness resources to students and families in need. Included in this area is a partnership with Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health in which students at each of our elementary buildings have access to a licensed mental health counselor. Families are able to schedule intake appointments through the school which greatly reduces the time frame that it takes to get their child into counseling services. The partnership with Child and Adolescent includes spacing at GlenOak High School which allows families in Plain Local to have convenient access to these services. The Plain Local School District provides school counselors at each level with one full time counselor at each elementary school, two at Glenwood, three at Oakwood Middle School and seven at GlenOak High School. They help to provide evidence based prevention education, trauma informed curricula to promote positive decision making. The district saw an increase in the use of controlled substances at our middle school and high school levels through an analysis of suspension data. The creation of Building Healthy Habits was implemented as a suspension reduction program in which students complete a 5 day course through online modules while connecting with social workers and counselors from their building. Upon return to school the students and their families continue to work with these social workers and counselors to implement the things they learned during the Healthy Habits course.
Outcome Data: Student discipline data (improved, stayed consistent, decline)
Funding Used For:
Community Partner:
Anticipated Impact: Students in Kindergarten through 12th grade
Goal 2: Boosting Academic Performance
- Grant Area: Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid
- Need: Increased Academic Achievement in our District
- Initiative Description: The Plain Local Strategic Plan Goal 1 focuses on Academic Achievement which has a subgoal of performing above comparison school districts in Ohio and local school districts in state and national testing. Through the use of Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid the district has focused on identifying and reducing learning gaps and increasing our graduation rate. Through the purchase of Dell Laptops for each of our elementary teachers in FY 2023 we have been able to implement Acadience Learning testing which gives specific data in the areas of Foundational Reading Skills which allows us to provide personalized instruction for our students in our youngest grades. This data combined with training staff have received in LETRS allow us to leverage our Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) model which meets the needs of each child. All staff are trained in using a Structured Literacy curriculum, including our Literacy Specialists who are receiving advanced structured literacy certification. We have implemented an Alternative School program at GlenOak High School known as Alt School. Alt School is an educational setting designed to meet the academic needs of a student while helping them get back on track to successfully transition back to the traditional school setting. Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid has been utilized to support staffing with teachers in addition to administrative costs to operating the program. Students in this program receive a blended learning approach which uses both in-person and online components. School counseling services along with credit recovery are available to the students in this program to work to get them back on track with their graduation requirements. In addition to this program instructional support is provided to students who have been identified as not on track to graduate in test preparation, graduation Seal attainment, and completion of Rise Up programming. Rise Up is the training and credentialing program that provides foundational employability skills to help people attain jobs and get promoted in the retail industry and beyond. The program is sponsored by the National Retail Federation’s 501(c)(3) foundation. The final area within this goal in which dollars are used is to support transitional services to our students receiving specialized learning support through an IEP. Through the use of a PreETS (PreEmployment Transition Services) instructor, students complete modules designed to give them skills for a successful transition following graduation.
Outcome Data:
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Ohio Achievement Test Results (improved, stayed consistent, decline)
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Graduation Rate (improved, stayed consistent, decline)
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PreETS Completion Rate
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Rise Up Completion Rate
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Alt School Program Completion
Funding Used For:
Community Partner:
Anticipated Impact: Students in Kindergarten through 12th grade
Goal 3: Implementing Positive Behavior Intervention Support
- Grant Area: Student Success and Wellness and Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid
- Need: Increase positive decision making within our students
- Initiative Description: Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an evidence-based, tiered framework for supporting students’ behavioral, academic, social, and emotional health. This programming uses data to identify strengths, uncover needs and monitor student progress. In Plain Local 100% of certified and classified staff that are working directly with our students have been trained in PBIS. Training all staff allows us to have consistency from our buses to our cafeterias to our classrooms. All learning environments have common expectations that are explicitly taught and positively reinforced. Work in this area aligns with our Plain Local Strategic Plan Goal 4: Climate, Culture and Wellness in working to create an atmosphere that celebrates healthy attitudes and decisions. At our elementary level we continue to use Success Coaches and Community Liaisons to promote positive decision making using the PBIS framework. Focus areas for this year include kindness, respect and sharing. The district has implemented a SOAR program which stands for : Show Respect, Own Your Choices, Act Kindly, Ready to Learn through the implementation of the PBIS programming. Oakwood and GlenOak are currently doing Sources of Strength which is a strength-based suicide prevention and wellness initiative that assists students with identifying and utilizing personal strengths to promote wellness.
Outcome Data:
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Student discipline data (improved, stayed consistent, decline)
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Completion of training
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Tiered Fidelity Inventory
Funding Used:
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Success Coaches
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Community Liaisons
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PBIS Trainer
Community Partner:
Anticipated Impact: Students in Kindergarten through 12th grade
Goal 4: Strengthening Safety and Security
- Grant Area: Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid
- Need: Increased safety and security at each of our buildings
- Initiative Description: The need for safety and security at each of our buildings continues to to be a focus area for our district. Dollars utilized from Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid will allow us to have a School Resource Officer at each of our buildings. This collaborative effort is through a partnership with the Stark County Sheriff Department and allows us to concentrate on Plain Local Strategic Plan Goal 2: Facilities / Safety and Security. In addition to the dollars from Student Wellness and Success, the district received a K-12 Safety Grant in the amount of $600,000 which provided equipment at each school. Additional cameras, bollards, door sensors and strobe sensor lights were installed with these dollars.
Outcome Data:
Funding Used:
Community Partner:
- Stark County Sheriff Department
Anticipated Impact: Students in Kindergarten through 12th grade