Parkview Elementary School, part of the Van Buren School District, has the special distinction of being a featured School on the Move for the second year in a row. The school increased its letter grade and its overall ESSA School Index score by a whopping 8.44 points. Parkview Elementary is a school that has remained on the move.
When a fire broke out in Parkview Elementary School in July of 2021, only desks and chairs were left behind. Everything else–books, curriculum materials–was destroyed. “We just had to go on with the business of learning,” explained Joyce Haver, Director of Elementary Learning Services, adding that everyone worked hard to clean up after the fire and salvage what could be used again. Acquiring new resources was compounded by supply chain problems, so Parkview shifted its focus to what it already had in abundance: the quality of its teachers. Principal Mary McCutchen said that new instructional strategies were centered around the mastery of standards in a continuous cycle of teaching, assessing, and reteaching. Now, however, she has struck a balance between this drilling down on instruction and simply having fun. “We want students to love learning and coming to school,” she said. Ms. McCutchen asks about her students’ interests and what is meaningful to them. With her staff, she wants to know where people are and how they’re feeling. Parkview Elementary recently hosted a Fall Fun Week to maintain this balance. “We work hard and we play hard,” she said.
To address learning loss from the pandemic, the school district used ESSER funds to hire paraprofessionals who were placed on a rotating schedule. They visited one school in the morning and another school in the afternoon, moving to a new set of schools every three weeks. In this way, they were able to provide tutoring to all first grade students in the district who needed further support. An enriched summer school program provided breakfast and lunch and intensive tutoring. Students were assessed before they came, tutors were hired, and activities were designed to target literacy skills, phonemic awareness, STEM, and art, among other areas.
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