A pause in federal funding has led to a change in an education firm’s support of the Watson Chapel School District despite reports of a turnaround in its academic performance.
Superintendent Keith McGee said the WCSD was notified April 1 funds from the American Rescue Plan including the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund were no longer available due to the federal government not allowing an extension of funds. The district had used these funds to acquire the services of Bailey Education Group, a Mississippi-based firm that has consulted with district personnel on educational and operational matters since Arkansas Board of Education placed the district on a two-year accreditation probation in October 2023.
McGee said during Monday’s WCSD board meeting he has requested to state Education Secretary Jacob Oliva state-appropriated funds so the district won’t have to use any of its operating funds. Board members, however, unanimously approved the use of those funds if necessary to fulfill the district’s contract with Bailey.
The U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 19 updated its policies on all future payments under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security; Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations; and ARP acts, saying states must pay those in advance and then submit to the DoE for reimbursement. “The Department is changing the requirements to ensure taxpayer funds are expended responsibly, and will require states to keep the receipts to confirm this,” a DoE news release reads.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Kimberly Mundell, spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Education, said the agency is working on an extension request for funding.
“Our goal is to work them out of a job by creating a support system on the district level to the building leadership, ultimately to the teachers and then the students,” McGee said. “That support is halted. That coaching, that support system, that sustainability piece — I don’t want to use the word ‘halted’ for the sustainability piece; I want to say it’s been ‘slowed’ — and that’s OK, but we want to be moving in the right direction.”
The WCSD’s service days with Bailey were suspended as of April 1 and ARP/ESSER funds were no longer available for use as of March 28, according to district officials. Traci Holland, the district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, said Bailey personnel were on site March 31 and April 1.
Holland said Bailey is staying connected with teachers by email and Zoom because they don’t want the work they’ve started to stop.
“Our consultants and coaches through Bailey are still working with us in a little bit of a different way because we’re on pause for that funding,” Holland said.
The WCSD’s contract with Bailey is for $679,500 over 453 days and was signed May 14, 2024. If the district can be reimbursed through March 28, the district would only have $150,000 left to pay Bailey, McGee said. Otherwise, the district would need to pay an additional $350,000, he said, citing a figure from district treasurer Norma Walker.
McGee is confident the ADE will help cover the remaining costs.
“The state Department of Ed has always been very positive and very supportive of schools and they love to see the impact of schools, so I’m not concerned about that piece,” McGee said.
An overflow of parents and other district supporters attended Monday’s board meeting as students who showed the most growth in their interim exams for the Arkansas Teaching and Learning Assessment System received certificates from district administration. The celebration was held in light of information the WCSD received about its performance as a whole, adding if final ATLAS scores were to be released for this school year, Edgewood Elementary (grades K-1) would improve to C from F, Coleman Elementary (grades 2-5) would improve to C from D, and Watson Chapel High School (grades 9-12) would improve to D from F, just 5 points shy of a C, McGee said.
The ADE assigned past grades to the campuses in the 2022-23 school year. Letter grades were not issued for 2023-24 due to a new accountability policy with the implementation of ATLAS as the state testing battery. Official letter grades are expected to be released later this summer.
“Basically what they did is called a simulation to see, based on your current data from the past and the one you got this year, they would do a new calculation of the accountabilities to see where you would fall,” McGee said. The ADE proposed new calculations to the state board last week.
“If they had to issue us a grade right now, it would be those grades, so that is a huge celebration to show that we are going in the right direction now. It’s a huge positive,” McGee said.
While the estimated letter grades give WCSD officials “a window” into their performance, Holland said, the success story does not slow down the district’s efforts.
“Even though we’ve made improvements, we’re not an A or a B. That’s what our goal is,” Holland said.
Holland joined the WCSD after McGee was hired last July, when the district was well into its contract with Bailey. She said WCSD officials have seen improvement in teachers’ instruction and their review of grade-level standards, when asked what has the district done to change its academic performance.
“They’re focusing their work around what’s expected at that grade level,” she said. “One thing we did celebrate with our K-1 students, because we don’t have all the ATLAS data for them … our K-1 students were celebrated through Lexia, but Lexia is an intervention program. We’re not putting all our apples in the Lexia program. We’re focusing on grade-level standards.”
McGee commended the teachers for stepping up and working “extremely, extremely” hard to improve student outcomes, but he cautioned against leaving behind high-achieving scholars or those who are not performing at grade level.
“The key thing is that the work is not over, now,” McGee said. “While we’re celebrating, we still have work to do. So we have to build upon that. We’ve still got to test this year. We want to look at that data. We want our kids to keep pushing. We feel we’ve got a strong, good feeling about it because what we saw in the fall, we didn’t see kids score in Level 4 (the highest-performing of four levels). Now we see kids starting to score in Level 4.”
