DeKalb schools ‘moving in the right direction,’ district officials say

DeKALB – DeKalb School District 428 officials talked academic success, a new elementary school and other goals for the next year in a State of the District address this week.

Tuesday’s school board meeting saw community members join the district’s administration, staff members and elected officials to hear updates on what students have accomplished over the past school year.

Amonaquenette Parker, the district’s director of improvement and innovation, said she wants the schools to thrive.

Parker works out of the Improvement and Innovation Department for DeKalb schools. She collaborates at times with Jessica Nall, the district’s assessment coordinator.

“We recognize that as we share this data with you, we have a long way to go,” Parker said. “It’s not pretty in some areas. And we know that we have to put some things in place to not just be pretty but to do right by our students.”

Nall followed Parker by sharing data from the district’s Measures of Academic Progress tests. Nall said district leaders feel encouraged by the latest numbers.

MAP Data is a common measurement of achievement and growth in math, reading, language arts and science among students in K-12. The district typically tracks students in cohorts over time to see how they fare.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” Nall said.

According to district data, students in grades one through six exceeded the national growth percentile in English language arts for the 2024-2025 school year. DeKalb second graders had the highest growth margin compared to the national average, data shows, at 35% compared to the 7% national percentile. In first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth grades, DeKalb students also measured higher on their MAP tests than the national average, according to district statistics.

DeKalb middle schoolers’ MAP growth for English language arts fell just below the national average, though they did meet benchmark expectations, data shows. Seventh graders this year measured at the 54th percentile, below the 62% national average. DeKalb eighth graders measured at the 55th percentile for ELA learning growth, below the national average of 70%, data shows.

Nall touted Freshman on Track, saying the student success indicator is a more successful way to predict an individual’s likelihood to graduate from high school than comparing data like race, socioeconomic status and prior achievement.

According to district data, 77% of freshmen were on track to graduate by the spring 2024-25 school year, down from 82% in 2023-24.

Nall also pointed to the district’s suspension data.

According to district data, 1,089 students incurred a total of 4,511 suspensions through May 16 of this school year. During that same period last year, 1,053 students had 3,217 suspensions.

That means fewer DeKalb students got suspended more than once this year compared to the 2023-24 school year.

School facilities

Tammy Carson, the district’s director of facilities and safety operations, said the new elementary school is expected to open on time and is coming in under budget.

If all goes to plan, she said, Dr. Leroy A. Mitchell Elementary School is scheduled to open in August. The project was expected to cost the district about $33.8 million.

Carson said the district wants to better promote the use of its facilities for rentals to generate revenue.

“We are implementing a new software to make it more efficient and user-friendly and to also provide us a better tracking mechanism for our facility use throughout the district,” Carson said. “That will be rolled out in August when we return to school.”

Board President Christopher Boyes questioned if the district is still making its school facilities off limits during the summer, when it could be better served by opening the doors to the public for alternate purposes.

“Are we still blacking out an entire period of the year where people would want to rent our facilities, though?” Boyes said.

Carson said she plans to explore the idea raised by Boyes.

“We can look at other options,” Carson said. “It is more challenging in the summer to be able to open our buildings up because that is the time of year that we have to be able to clean our buildings from top to bottom and ensure that we have it ready for our students and staff in August. It’s also a time for our construction projects.”

IT initiatives

Ben Bayle, the district’s chief technology officer, briefed the board on what his department has accomplished. He said one achievement over the past year was lowered costs for students’ electronic learning devices.

“We actually mitigated the increasing cost of our 1:1 devices for [20]25-26 school year by saving the district more than 10% of the total purchase,” Bayle said.

Bayle gave credit to his department for what it’s done to drive down costs.

“We did that by working very strategically with the business department, working with the board and trying to get these ... in front of you guys usually before the holiday break,” Bayle said. “That way, we can guarantee receiving the devices by July and also we were able to mitigate many of the price fluctuations that occurred post-election.”