The Warren County R-III school district has now achieved half of their goals in their current Continuous School Improvement Plan, which is set to run through 2025. 

The R-III district has met seven of their 14 goals in the current CSIP. Under the student achievement focus area, the district has met one of their three goals. For the second consecutive year, the district met the goal of increasing the A+ eligibility rate by 3 percent over the CSIP cycle. After having a 19 percent rate of eligibility for the A+ program in 2021, the district’s rate increased to 24 percent in 2022 and 25 percent in 2023. Sixty-two seniors are eligible for the program for 2023. Forty-five students were eligible in 2021. 

The district did not meet their goals for developing a system to collect longitudinal math data by the end of the 2023 school year and has not yet met the goal of having 75 percent of all students in kindergarten through eighth grade be reading on or above grade level or achieving at least one year’s worth of reading growth per year over the CSIP cycle. 

Warren County R-III Superintendent Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith said the district changed their assessment of reading levels to the STAR assessment, which he said is “a little bit more rigorous.” He noted the drop from 71.8 percent in 2022 to 69 percent in 2023, which he believes is mainly due to the new assessment. 

“We’re still not meeting that goal right now,” Klinginsmith said. “But I do think we are on our way. Letters training, we’re starting to see that happen more and more in the elementary school, which is the science of reading. And that definitely seems to be making a positive impact on the way our students are learning to read. So as our teachers are going through that, we’re kind of getting more and more teachers involved. That seems to be having a very positive impact on those teachers that have gone through that training.”

Klinginsmith added they hope to have another trainer this summer, which would allow for additional people in the district to help train for the letters training. 

Although the goal was not met, Klinginsmith said the district is making progress in collecting longitudinal math data. 

“Hopefully by next month, we’ll have something built,” Klinginsmith said. “Now, we’re running into a kind of a problem because the engine that we use internally to disseminate all this data, like our financial dashboard, is a program called Tyler Pulse or Tyler Analytics… And that is having an end of life at next year. So, we’re gonna have to figure out something to continue on with that stuff. So as technology isn’t supported, we’re going to figure something out.”

The district has also met goals of creating a centralized location for health and well being resources accessible to all stakeholders to support Warren County R-III students as measured by a deliverable resource by May 2023, offering additional mental health options for staff by May 2024, each building hosting an event within the year with the intent of connecting to families in a meaningful way, increasing partnerships between businesses in the community and students by May 2025, maintaining classroom size ratios and building occupancy requirements to avoid overcrowding in elementary buildings as measured by elementary enrollment data and staffing reports by the end of the CSIP cycle and decreasing the average age of the bus fleet from 2014 to 2016 by the end of the cycle. 

Although they did not meet their goal, the district increased staff retention by 2 percent from 2022 to 2023. 

The district did see a decrease in the number of students with two or less office referrals by over 1 percent. One of the district’s goals was to increase students with two or less office discipline referrals annually by at least 0.5 percent each year. 

“We’re going to need to rework that goal,” Klinginsmith said. “I’m just not sure it’s gonna be attainable… Because one thing we don’t want to do is not address discipline to try to meet the goals. We’re definitely addressing the discipline. We’re hoping to change behaviors. We are seeing some students do that. Ninety-one percent of our kids are doing a great job. But we do still have about 10 percent that we continue to work with.”