JPS Board President Paul Abbott and Superintendent Dr. Kevin Whitaker (September 13, 2022)
The Jamestown Public Schools district, including three schools in the district, have been assigned a “targeted for improvement” designation by New York State.
JPS Superintendent Dr. Kevin Whitaker said the State Department of Education initially gave the targeted and comprehensive support designations to the district in 2019, “Those are generally based on sub-group performance, so how sub-groups perform on state assessments, graduation rate, and things like that. The problem is, we hit COVID, so it rolled over from ’19 to ’20 and ’20 to ’21 and ’21 to ’22, and so they’ve rolled it again. So hopefully, and we are hoping to move off that list.”
Whitaker said having students back in school is key to moving off the list, “The second things we need to do is make sure that we’re engaging a process that identifies kids early. So, creating an early warning system, making sure that we’re looking at data that says, ‘Hey, maybe this kid is falling off track a little bit.’ How can we bring supports at an early age rather than months or years later when they’re way off the track?”
The Jamestown School Board approved comprehensive improvement plans for the district and improvement plans for Ring Elementary, Jefferson Middle, and Washington Middle Schools at its meeting Tuesday.
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