Prairie Grove District Gives Report

PRAIRIE GROVE — School districts in Arkansas are required to give an annual report to the public and last week, it was Prairie Grove’s turn to update the public about the 2012-13 school year.

Missy Hixson, assistant superintendent, handed out a colorful, one- page summary at the board’s Oct. 22 meeting.

Prairie Grove began the 2012-13 school year with a fund balance of $1,950,000. The school received $ 13,916,778 in revenues for the year and spent $13,888,963.

The district ended the year with a balance of $1,977,815.

The school’s building fund started out with $ 528,150. It received $ 993,009 in revenues and had $ 756,893 in expenses, for an ending balance of $764,226.

Prairie Grove enrolled 1,846 students in 2012-13. Of this total, 46.02 percent qualified for the free and re d u ce d lunch program.

Prairie Grove spent $ 431,018 in Title I federal funds to assist economically disadvantaged students and spent $ 57,874 in Title II federal funds to improve teacher quality.

Hixson said the district’s scores from the 2013 Benchmark tests and end- ofcourse exams are all above state average and some of the highest in northwest Arkansas.

Following is the percentage of students who scored proficient or advanced on the literacy tests: third grade, 83 percent; fourth grade, 88 percent; fifth grade, 86 percent; sixth grade, 80 percent; seventh grade, 78 percent; eighth grade, 85 percent; 11th grade literacy test, 85 percent.

Following is the percentage of students who scored proficient or better on the math tests: third grade, 90 percent; fourth grade, 85 percent; fifth grade, 78 percent; sixth grade, 86 percent; seventh grade, 74 percent; eighth grade, 73 percent; end of course algebra 1, 84 percent; end of course geometry, 89 percent.

For the federal law, No Child Left Behind, all Prairie Grove school buildings received a “Needs Improvement” status for the spring 2013 test scores for math and literacy under the Elementary and Secondary Act.

Hixson said a school is either “achieving” or “needs improvement” and one student’s score can cause a school to be placed in the needs improvement category.

She said it’s disappointing to the staff to be placed on needs improvement status when the school’s test scores are in the 80th and 90th percentile.

“Our main goal is to teach kids, make them successful,” Hixson said. “We’re doing that all the time, improving teaching and learning. We want kids to understand what we’re teaching them, to graduate and go to college or get a job. We would do that even if we didn’t have all these goals they put on us. We’re going to do that no matter what.”

Goa ls for 20 12 -13 were implementation of Common Core state standards, technology integration, EAST Core at the high school, increase participation of Advanced Placement c lasses , Project Lead the Way and testing students using a system called Measures of Academic Progress.