As a Charter School, we are overseen by a Board of Trustees (BOT) instead of the traditional "School Committee". Our BOT includes individuals who possess a cross-section of skills required to fulfill the responsibilities of the Board, people who reflect diversity of experience and perspectives, and people who represent the voices of essential constituencies. The BOT charges the Executive Director with responsibility for ensuring that the School develops and follows decision-making processes that are clear, effective, and democratic. The following principles guide that work:
• The process for making decisions must be clear and consistently followed.
• Different decisions should be made by different pathways depending on three factors:
1.Who is affected by the decision?
2.Who has the most knowledge about the issue?
3.Who is the most committed to the outcome?
• People support what they create. Therefore, decisions that require full community commitment should involve as much full community participation in decision- making as is possible and practical.
• People act responsibly for what they care about. Therefore, issues that members of the community care about should have processes for being brought forward and acted upon.
NCCES aims to be democratic to the greatest extent possible and practical. It seeks a balance between democratic processes and efficiency in its governance and decision-making. The aim is to make decisions with a blend of openness, equality and democracy, combined with concreteness and efficiency. Members of the community should have input and authority for decisions that affect them. But not everyone should be involved with every decision. There are 5 pathways for decision-making at the school. Each pathway involves specific processes, roles, and responsibilities for how a decision is to be made.
NCCES is committed to gathering quantitative and qualitative data to inform decisions. For the fourth year in a row the Board of Trustees, along with the school’s Operations Leadership Team, used a data-management tool called a “data dashboard” which tracks the success of prioritized objectives and metrics that can be tracked and updated every six weeks. This tool outlines four critical goals for the school which map back to the three key measures used by the Charter School Office (Faithfulness to Charter, Academic Success and Organizational Viability).
The tool provides the board with an ongoing and relatively streamlined view into key drivers for school success. The board and school leaders evaluate the tool annually and prioritize measures with respect to their effectiveness and relevance to the school community and overarching strategic goals for the school.
The dashboard is at its core a tool used to identify successes and challenge areas in school operations linked to the school’s accountability plan. Every six weeks school leaders gather and assess the dashboard data and react accordingly. The following programmatic changes were made as a result of using the dashboard:
• School leaders reevaluated the school’s teacher evaluation and observation system and staffing as the number of teacher observations per block declined.
• Restructured organizational chart for deeper focus on instructional quality. Hence, the Math Science Co-Chair will have more time to spend coaching, providing feedback and observing teachers.
• As a result of analysis of student progress in Middle School & High School Prep math classes (at the second six week mark), it reflected students struggling to move forward in the Prentice Hall math program allowing us to switch to a more direct instructional approach with a teacher trained in elementary math.
The Student Support Services Team created their own dashboard to monitor measures related to student services (i.e. attendance, referrals to the Dean’s office, visits with guidance counselors, etc.). This work, along with analysis of the school-wide dashboard, resulted in a second semester staffing change allocating more resources to improving the intake process and communication related to behavior management in the Dean’s office.
Decisions involving student achievement take place at the teacher, student and classroom level and through six week data team meetings in which the principal, the subject area head and the teacher review student level data to determine how best to teach, engage and support student achievement in the four fundamental achievement areas of the school. Student placement in classes, interventions and enrichment occur as a result of assessment data.
In addition, Families, teachers and students are asked to fill out a climate survey at the end of each year. The survey assesses the academic, social and instructional culture of the school. This survey is a comprehensive document of seventy questions. As an essential school we view parents as partners and value student and family input. The survey is provided in both English and Spanish.