Black Hawk Middle School will focus on improving attendance and decreasing referrals next school year. 

Principal Rachel Quintana, who took over as interim principal this school year and will return as principal next school year, is setting multiple goals for the middle school for the 2023-2024 school year. 

Quintana wants to see Black Hawk Middle School grow by 2% in reading at all grade levels next school year. She hopes distributing plan periods more equally will allow for interventions to be done. For the current school year, all three grade levels made improvements with reading scores. Both sixth and eighth grades met the school’s goal of a 2% increase in scores. The sixth grade reading score increased by 3.9% and the eighth grade score increased by 2.8%. The seventh grade score increased by 1.7%, just under the 2% goal. 

“I think we could have shown more growth in each grade level but we pull our interventionists to sub constantly,” Quintana said. “So they’re not able to do interventions with fidelity. They meet with kids once a week. And that’s even when they are able to do them weekly. So really using our interventionists as they are there to be used I think would help us see that additional growth next year.”

The school saw an uptick in behavior referrals this school year, which Quintana attributes to various factors, including a change in leadership in the middle of the school year. Quintana’s goal for the middle school is to decrease the total number of referrals by 5% in the 2023-2024 school year. The middle school had over 1,100 referrals as of April 4. 

“One of our goals next year is overall to decrease those and give teachers strategies in their classroom,” Quintana said. “And work on de-escalation and building those relationships with students in their classroom.”

The middle school did see a decrease of about 6% in office referrals for threatening and physical infractions from over 19% to 13%. 

Another proposed goal for Black Hawk Middle School for the 2023-2024 school year is to maintain 90% attendance. They will post daily attendance on Facebook. Quintana said the school’s proportional attendance through March was 78%. 

The middle school also plans to work to help the school engage families and build relationships with the community. They hope to hold two community events next school year. They also plan to improve relationships by sharing information and creating partnerships with businesses in the community when possible.