Portage Township Schools students won’t be forced to make up days missed because of the Aug. 11 derecho, Superintendent Amanda Alaniz told the School Board on Monday.
The Indiana Department of Education agreed to the plan Friday.
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The start of school, originally set for Aug. 12, was postponed because of the extensive power outages throughout Portage Township, causing students to miss nine days of instruction.
“In Portage, our students receive more instructional minutes than the Indiana Department of Education requires, and we are being permitted to use these additional instructional minutes to account for the missed days in this special circumstance,” Alaniz said in a message to parents Monday.
“I knew that if nothing else, it was going to be the best-case scenario so that we didn’t have to have days at the end of the school year because what we know is that quality instructional time at the end of the school year is hard,” Alaniz told the board.
There are strings attached as part of that agreement with the state.
“We will have to sign some assurances with the state that include reprioritizing our instructional minutes throughout the day, monitoring individual student attendance and intentionally leveraging our I-LEARN checkpoint data and other valuable and reliable metrics of student achievement to include those diagnostic assessments I mentioned to make the most impactful change for that instructional time,” Alaniz told the board.
“I’m not surprised only because the DOE has been so willing to listen and to strategize and to support the efforts that are going on in each school district,” she said.
“They met with us virtually, they met with us in person I can’t tell you how many times,” Alaniz said.
In addition to the 100 mph winds that caused extensive damage to Northwest Indiana trees and the electrical grid in that storm, much of central Indiana was flooded. Local, state and federal governments declared a state of emergency.
“I did not necessarily think that you would be able to use instructional minutes. That was a creative way of looking at it,” Alaniz said.
In her note to parents, she said, “Our staff will be prepared to address this (loss of nine days of instruction) by using assessment data to drive additional targeted remediation and enrichment opportunities for our students. This will be a rigorous school year for our students, and regular attendance will be even more important than ever so we can be sure to give them the time they need to grow and excel this school year.”
In other business, the school board received the annual teacher effectiveness report. Out of 415 evaluations, 80.5% of teachers were rated highly effective and 19% effective, with 0.2% rated as needing improvement and 0.4% ineffective. Those results are similar to previous years.
“Our district has significant instructional strength,” board Vice President Wilma Vazquez said, as indicated by more than 80% of the teachers being rated as highly effective.
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I-LEARN data will be released to the public on Friday, Alaniz said. “We’ve got some strong areas, and we’ve got some areas where we have a lot of work to do.”
Board President Andy Maletta was named recipient of the Indiana School Board Association’s Outstanding Board Service Award for Region 1, Vazquez said, citing his exceptional governance, leadership, commitment to education and professional development for the board, including retreats. “You have an outstanding leadership style. You’re open-minded. You collaborate with the rest of us,” she said.
“I was a little taken aback when I got the phone call,” Maletta said. “It’s awesome to be on this board with this group of people.”
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.