School Board moves forward with FLY initiative
Springfield School District held three public hearings on December 2, 7 and 10, to offer to the people of the district the most recent information the district has collected regarding the Flexible Learning Year (FLY) and to seek public opinion. The Springfield Board of Education is considering whether or not to move forward with filing a request to the Minnesota Department of Education to extend the current FLY program.
Springfield is in the sixth year in the program.
What began with more than 20 school districts in southern Minnesota has been reduced over the years, as schools opted out for a variety of reasons.
While the number has dwindled, those schools which have continued with FLY have demonstrated a commitment to its success, not as a program solely based on an early start date but on student achievement and professional development.
“It’s not just about the early school start,” said Superintendent Keith Kottke as he opened the public hearings. “It’s about one thing — student achievement. There’s no money behind it or no other agenda.”
“There’s also a lot of professional development that we have done. That professional development could be done without an early school start, but the early school start has benefited the added days’ instruction,” Kottke continued. “If we add more days of instruction and are not doing productive work it doesn’t matter. It was part of the design, to say: ‘If we are going to add days they are going to be better; and they are going to be high quality.’”
The FLY mission is to make systemic changes designed to improve student achievement. “We wanted to develop professional learning communities that would be embedded in all consortium school districts. Teachers could work collaboratively with other schools where our teachers could have critical friends and colleagues coordinated with other schools,” Superintendent Kottke emphasized. “We did that with all our departments to help provide support and sharing best practices with each other. “That all could be done without an early school start.”
Two schools in the consortium required their teachers to participate in the professional development — Springfield and Sleepy Eye. Two schools that achieved outstanding results — Springfield and Sleepy Eye — have been named Reward Schools by the Minnesota Department of Education.
The design of FLY allows more flexibility and schools to address specific needs for their staff that wasn’t common across all consortium school districts, the superintendent explained. Of the original schools in the consortium, 21 schools participated in the second FLY.
“We started working in pods… smaller units, which allowed more flexibility and provided more respectful and meaningful professional development for our staff. Springfield and Sleepy Eye podded together because both staffs were in the right place and were doing consistent work,” Superintendent Kottke said.
Some schools of the 21 are still interested in continuing, but in separate, smaller and more manageable groups. Springfield and Sleepy Eye have created a pod with Redwood Area, Windom and Luverne Schools, and are interested in collaborating with professional development as it relates to Standards Based Learning, Professional Learning Communities, and Teacher Mentoring / Induction. Minneota, Lake and Ivanhoe have podded with 7 other Minnesota River Valley Education District schools. (A professional learning community is a group of educators who meet regularly, share expertise, and work collaboratively to improve teaching skills and the academic performance of students.)
Sleepy Eye, Springfield, Windom and Redwood Area are considering a flexible learning year calendar that would allow up to nine instructional days prior to high stakes testing. The reason for their interest is that it provides positive student achievement results, a more logical instructional calendar, and coincides natural breaks with grading periods. These schools determine what these needs are locally. Survey results can be found in this week's Advance-Press