Chapter 3
III. Engagement of Educational Partners in Continuous School Improvement
- Describe the process for developing, implementing, and monitoring the schoolwide action plan and preparing the progress report.
- How were educational partners involved in developing the schoolwide action plan?
- How were educational partners involved in implementing and monitoring the schoolwide action plan?
- How were educational partners involved in the preparation of the progress report?
Maris Stella School began the work on the recommendations from the 2020 Self-Study Report in the Summer of 2022. Due to ongoing COVID disruptions, collaboration initially was only possible with staff and volunteers. Other stakeholders could not be involved and the scope of the effort was severely confined to what the staff could address within campus facilities.
After COVID restrictions were relaxed, MSS convened a general stakeholder meeting in February 2023, to touch base with all its stakeholders and to initiate a review of all aspects of the organization. This meeting updated stakeholders on efforts so far, identified priority areas, and initiated groups and teams to work on priorities.
Between then and the present, the work has necessarily focused in specific priority areas involving specific individuals and teams. As the work progresses, it is expected that updates will be made to all stakeholders to keep everyone informed and involved.
MSS stakeholders include school administration (Principal and staff), faculty, school volunteers, parents through the Parent Teacher Association, students, school board, and the Palau Catholic Church. External collaborations include a formal partnership with McREL/REL Pacific, begun in July 2022, and informal ones with the Ministry of Education and other schools.
Personnel turnover, new and updated findings, and changing situation on the ground made it clear that a lot of effort was needed in re-constituting teams and re-familiarizing team members with the work. A new leadership team was created to lead the effort. The work then has been unpacked into manageable categories and is being assigned to sub-teams to complete.
The new leadership team has implemented a well documented formal process involving the board, which has representation from stakeholders, and school leadership and faculty. Using this mid-cycle review as an opportunity, this process will result in clear and well understood assessment of the current state of the school and a logical and relevant refined action plan.
At the same time, within the school, the principal and his team are working on various projects to establish infrastructure or low level capacity to support improvements going forward. Some of these include:
A. Website
- A website (http://www.marisstella.pw) was created to provide an organized and managed single source for the school’s institutional documentation and to serve as the springboard for information sharing to all stakeholders. This supports:
- Transparency efforts
- Institutional documentation efforts
- A communication system is being developed to establish the school’s presence on the web and to allow transitioning of official communication from paper to electronic.
B. Electronic Reporting
- An electronic report card system was piloted in SY2023 and is in trial this SY2024. Next step is to adopt it and begin transitioning the schools legacy processes to this technology based tool.
- An electronic gradebook/syllabus tracker is being built now, to be used by teachers to track instructional coverage.
- The two tools above are being developed to:
- Capture and manage student data
- Track learning by monitoring student report card performance and student progress on the syllabus/curriculum.
- Form a base for future development of a more comprehensive student information system.
C. Financial System
- The school’s financial software and its accounting approach is under review for change before the start of the next fiscal year. Some of the issues under consideration are:
- Establish inventory controls
- Establish budget planning
- Initiate review of options for financial reports linked to student outcomes
- Initiate review of options for resource management in the short term, working towards linking resources to the expected student learning results.
D. Partnerships
The McREL/REL Pacific partnership provides MSS with research based solutions for teacher effectiveness goals utilizing data and improvement science. At this early stage, MSS team members are still building their capabilities. Last year, the team members developed an improvement plan targeting 3rd grade reading comprehension and learned about the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. This year they are delving more into the "Study" and "Act" phases of PDSA and are implementing the Professional Learning Community concept as an organizational tool to facilitate this effort. By 2027, these improvement science based methods should be integrated in the instructional approach of MSS and their target will have expanded beyond reading comprehension to other need areas.