NSchool and District Collaboration & Early Release Days Report

Attached you will find the 2017-2018 Collaboration Time Report created and compiled through a collaborative effort between the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction and Hanover Research. Additionally, the annual Early Release Day surveys completed by 596 parents and staff members are also included.

I. Collaboration Time Report Summary:

Collaboration and and professional learning time provided to teachers and staff district wide consists of a variety of opportunities and is not exclusive to early release days. Scheduled in-service days, early release days, staff meeting time, common planning periods and Professional Learning Community (PLC) time scheduled outside the school day by PLC teams are examples of times and opportunities staff use to collaborate and receive professional learning activities.

With this collaboration time data reporting instrument and the reports created by it, principals and the District Instructional Team now have a consistent and systematic means of collecting data on the types of collaboration projects and professional learning activities occurring throughout district. Results show that the top two uses of this time during the 2016-2017 school year were: professional learning community Teamwork time (i.e. teachers working collaboratively) and professional development sessions.

The top three specific activities were identified as 1) teacher sharing of instructional strategies, 2) discussing professional literature and best practices, and 3) reviewing and analyzing student assessment data. Principals identify three specific areas that collaboration time had the biggest effects on: improving teacher collaborative practices, helping teachers identify students' individual learning needs, and helping administrators understand the professional development needs of their teachers.

Principals share that two areas in particular are greatly impacted by providing professional staff with early release, in-service, and collaboration time. Principals indicate that they felt this time "positively affected student academic performance" and "improved classroom instruction."

Also included as a part of the collaboration time report is a “Summary of PLC activities” – Records of the 600+ entries regarding collaboration activities this year.

II. Annual Early Release Day Parent and Staff Surveys:

Nearly 600 parents and staff members completed this year's surveys. In summary, parents and staff continue to believe that early release time for students is beneficial for teachers and that student’s benefit from the professional learning that teachers gain during this time. Most respondents indicate that the amount of early release days scheduled (6) are just about right. Some respondents would prefer Fridays to the current Wednesday schedule. There were some comments from parents that they would like the district to do a better job of sharing with them exactly what kind of work and professional learning activities teachers are doing on these days. The work we have done with Hanover Research in developing our new Collaboration Time data collection tool and the reports now provides this useful data and information for parents, the board, and district/school administrators.

The following dates have been selected for early release days for the 2018-2019 school year:

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Wednesday, May 1, 2019