Hot Springs schools recognized for having ‘high-reliability’ status

Hot Springs World Class High School and Main Street Visual and Performing Arts School were recently selected for the Level 1 certification in Marzano High-Reliability Schools.

“We are so excited that we have earned our Level 1 high-reliability status. We work very hard to provide a safe, supportive, and collaborative culture for not only our teachers, but our students and our wider community, parents, and our community partners as well,” high school Principal Kiley Simms said.

For the Main Street school, the achievement is a verification of the work they have been doing, according to Principal Kristen Gordon.

“It proves that what we’re doing is working and that we’re

able to use data and input from our staff, our parents, and our teachers, as well as us included, to make decisions that will impact our school,” Gordon said.

The high-reliability school program was created by Marzano Resources to “help transform schools into organizations that take proactive steps to ensure student success,” according to a news release.

The Marzano High-Reliability Schools framework serves as a long-term strategic planning guide for schools and districts, it said.

Rather than constantly seeking new initiatives, the release said leaders are encouraged to concentrate their school improvement efforts on five key areas: Safe, Supportive, and Collaborative Culture, Effective Teaching in Every Classroom, Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum, Standards-Referenced Reporting, and Competency-Based Education.

Using the research-based five-level hierarchy, along with leading and lagging indicators, educators learn to assess, monitor, and confirm the effectiveness of their schools, it said.

Simms said the high school worked hard to form special and strong relationships between teachers, staff, students, parents, and the community.

“We really want everyone to feel like they have a part and a place within our school walls and a voice,” Simms said.

“I feel like we earned this certification because we place emphasis on everyone having that voice, in our collaboration and our safe environment,” she said.

Gordon said she feels her school has worked to achieve a “collaborative culture.”

“We work hand in hand with our staff and our parents to make sure we’re doing the best for our students. If we were only working by ourselves, that would not be successful,” Gordon said.

Simms said the school’s mission is to do whatever it takes to guarantee that students leave prepared for college and a career, noting student success is not only academic, but personal.

“Our teachers spend a lot of time developing really quality relationships with our students. Our teachers spend time developing those same types of relationships with parents because we want everyone to know we are working toward school and student improvement and want everyone to have that voice,” she said.

“Our students’ success is really rooted in what our teachers offer our students every day in the classroom instructionally,” Simms said. “We work hard to meet students where they are and to help students achieve anything they set their minds to.”

Gordon said they focus on the whole child at Main Street and look at how they’re doing academically, socially, emotionally, and their behavior.

“We’re making constant improvements in all three of those areas so that we can better meet the needs of each individual, but not necessarily just one part, but the whole child, as well,” she said. “We use that data that we receive on each student to make instructional decisions for each child.”

Student success means helping students accomplish their dreams, Simms said, noting some of the students will enter the workforce for jobs that aren’t created yet.

She said some of the students will make up their own careers and are in the future but preparing students with essential skills, communication, mathematics, interpersonal skills is all part of helping them prepare for that unknown future.

“Success for students is whatever they want to accomplish in their future and just giving them those foundational skills to make sure that if they dream it, they can do it,” she said.

“Our students being successful is everything. That’s why we are here each and every day, and when our students are successful, we’re successful. That’s how we gauge if what we’re doing is actually working or not,” Gordon said.

“I’m so proud of Hot Springs World Class High School and Main Street for receiving the high-reliability schools Level 1 certification. I know all of our schools are working towards that,” Hot Springs School District Superintendent Stephanie Nehus said.

Nehus said she also hopes other schools in the district will receive the certification in the very near future, but noted she is proud of the work the schools are doing, focusing on the right work and doing that with fidelity.