The Wright City R-II Middle School has been placed on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE) list of Persistently Low Performing Schools. School officials will discuss what this could mean for the district at their monthly board meeting this Thursday and again during a community meeting Tuesday, May 24, at 7 p.m. at the middle school. Michelle Clark, of DESE, said this is the second year the U.S. government had implemented the list. Thirty-two schools in Missouri were placed on the list last year, with 88 schools on the list this year. “This is a list of Title I schools that are eligible to get resources they may desire to seek help with student performance,” she said. “We have to identify the schools that need the most help so we can direct our resources to them.” DESE will take a percentage of Title I money the state received in order to fund the grant. Wright City R-II Superintendent Dr. Chris Gaines said there is still much he doesn’t know about why the school was put on the list. “We’re trying to learn more,” he said. “DESE does not have specifics yet. There’s a lot we don’t know, but I would imagine it would hurt our ability to sell houses in the school district. It’ll hurt our growth, I think.” Before the May 24 meeting, Gaines will have presented the information he has to the staff, board of education and community action team. He said he has an idea of where low performances have been developing. “Our performance has dropped in fifth grade,” he said. “Our drop-off in fifth grade has been historical. Since 2003, we’ve seen drops in fifth-grade (performance) and thereafter in middle school. “I knew for some time that the performance needed to improve, but this list was a surprise,” he added. Gaines said the elementary school has compared itself relative to other state and local school districts. “We’re showing some gains,” he said. “But the problem is that everybody is improving faster than we are. We need an accelerated rate of improvement.” A competitive grant centered around four models would be available to the district, should it qualify, to help combat low performances. Those models include school closure, school restart, school turnaround and school transformation. Gaines has contacted DESE and other school districts and said anything done relative to the grant would center around “increasing rigor, increasing student engagement and moving data to action. “We would have to write our grant around one of four models,” he said. “We’ve talked to DESE and they’ve told us what other schools have done (when applying for the grant). We’re also trying to get visits with other schools.” A performance improvement plan has been implemented, as well. “We’ve had significant staff development around communication arts,” Gaines said. “We’ve also adopted and implemented a new math program. We had different programs with the elementary, middle school and high school, but now we’re aligned. Our discovery assessment has shown that reading and math in sixth, seventh and eighth grade have all went up and that’s obviously a positive sign.” He said student success has always been a priority. “Student performance has been an issue we’ve been working on putting in place to address,” Gaines said. “This is not a new issue, but we can’t make improvements without DESE’s help.”