Administration, teachers and staff at Perry Elementary continue to work on plans to eliminate the building’s School In Need of Assistance designation.

Principal Trevor Miller explains what it means to be on the SINA list.

“It’s based on Iowa Assessment scores, where if you’re not meeting the 80 percent, and now moving forward 100 percent, proficiency you’re on the School In Need of Assistance (list).  This year in Perry, we’re on year seven of our reading and literacy, where we haven’t been proficient in seven years so this is the year we have to do a restructuring plan where we have to make major changes moving forward with how the elementary school is going to look and how it’s going to focus” says Miller.

So for months they have been working to put together plans for how to make necessary improvements.

“Kevin Videgar, myself, Joel Martin the assistant principal, along with a group of teachers have come together, meeting every Wednesday since August to come up with a plan.  And what we came up with was a plan that we sent to the Department of Education.  It was approved on the first time through, which apparently we were the only school in Iowa that had that happen. So, it’s a very detailed plan.  Our timeline is 76 pages if you were to print it.  It’s a three year plan, it’s not something that gets accomplished in one year, so there’s many aspects to it.”

Miller and literacy coach Robin Koskovic share more about the school’s plan with us on today’s Let’s Talk Dallas County on AM 1310 KDLS during the 9am, noon and 5pm hours.