Sandwich School District superintendent says state report card shows district trending in right direction

A total of five Sandwich School District 430 schools have been designated commendable and one designated exemplary on the Illinois State Board of Education’s annual school report cards.

Superintendent Thomas Sodaro said he was happy with the district’s report card, especially the exemplary designation for Prairie View Elementary School.

Schools with exemplary designations are considered to be in the top 10% of schools in Illinois. Report cards were released Oct. 27.

The Sandwich schools earning commendable designations were Sandwich High School, Sandwich Middle School, Herman E. Dummer, Lynn G. Haskin, and W.W. Woodbury elementary schools.

While Sodaro said he was pleased with his district’s report card, he believes there is work to be done in coming years to address problems that arose from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sodaro said one of the biggest challenges students have faced in recent years is that learning gaps that have surfaced because of shutdowns and quarantines that prohibited classroom learning.

“We are currently evaluating all of our scores and curriculum looking for strengths and challenges, and especially looking for gaps that may have occurred in the past two to three years,” Sodaro said.

Sodaro said to address some of those learning gaps, Sandwich elementary schools recently implemented a Wait I Need Time (WINT) program that provides individualized support and helps customize learning for students in the classroom.

Sodaro said he believes COVID-19 had an impact on school district report card grades across the state and likely across the nation.

Sodaro said the district is lucky to have a 94% retention rate of teaching staff, and believes that stability is something that will help students to thrive.

Sodaro said as the teaching staff members returned to normal lesson plans, they have been working together to address individual student strengths and weaknesses to provide personalized learning and support year after year.

Sodaro said that while he believes Sandwich schools are trending in the right direction, he expects challenges to come as many of the students who will take the Illinois Assessment of Readiness tests for the in coming years have experienced the least amount of in-class learning.

“With the changes our staff has made across the board, individualized support is what everyone is striving for right now,” Sodaro said. “I think the biggest challenge is that all of our students had different restrictions and factors that affected them when they were home during COVID-19.”

Sodaro said it is hard to tell if the district’s commendable schools are close to earning an exemplary grade, because the schools are graded based off one set of students each year. For instance, only the third grade students are tested in the elementary school level each year.

“In our district it’s different because we only have one grade level in each building taking that test each year,” Sodaro said.

Sandwich schools are somewhat unique in that elementary schools end in third grade. Because of this, a new set of students will represent their elementary schools each year, and students going into fourth grade will then reflect a different school’s scores.

Sodaro said because the test is based on multiple factors outside of the students’ scores, including attendance and graduation rates, it is difficult to use the test as a perfect reflection of the schools.

“Every district has so many unique factors, I’m not sure if they can be what you look at as a short-term assessment,” Sodaro said. “I think the best way is to look at a long-term trend and follow those same students and assess them with the same criteria each year.”

Sodaro said they have been doing their own assessments to prepare and see where students are struggling, and to help teachers adjust their lesson plans to assist those who need additional help.