Macomb Today

The Eastpointe Community School District welcomed the principal of Pleasantview Elementary at a recent board meeting.

Falicia Moreland-Trice discussed the campus, which is one of the district’s upper elementary school buildings, teaching students in grades 3rd to 5th.

Trice was there to champion the school and was accompanied by a school social worker and a Title One instructional coach.

She opened by discussing her Student Support Team, which comprises all staff across grade levels monitoring the effectiveness of interventions. They start by identifying students in need and then creating a support system and program to meet their needs.

The school is adamant that their monitoring dynamics will improve their student’s grades.

This past fall, they identified 21 3rd graders for additional support. After the winter round of NWEA testing, 76% of those students grew in math and 67% grew in reading. For the 18 students from 4th grade who were identified, 93% grew in math scores and 94% grew in reading. For the 18 fifth graders, 72% grew in math and 82% in reading.

This data helps show the school that their interventions are working for these students.

“Several students were able to move out of the SST process. We were happy about that and that allowed us to move out our kids,” said Moreland-Trice. “And so now at each grade level, we have between 25 and 30 students. So, that gave us the opportunity to slide out some students out that were doing really, really well with this intervention, and then move in new students. I do want to point out before we talk about this slide, that one thing that hinders a lot of what we do is attendance. We work on how to improve the attendance of those students, because without them there, we can't really monitor the process that we have.”

Trice also talked about the success of their March is Reading Month efforts, speaking about guest readers Superintendent Christina Gibson and Senator Veronica Klinefelt who were popular guests that the students engaged with.