SCOTT CITY SCHOOLS PLEASED WITH MSIP REVIEW

SCOTT CITY -- School Superintendent Roger Tatum was pleased with the findings of a review of his school district last week, despite several concerns listed by the review team.

Members of the Missouri School Improvement Program, or MSIP, review team arrived in Scott City last week and evaluated the district's resource, process and performance standards. Tatum said the review team expressed several concerns about programming during an exit review last Thursday, but the overall evaluation was positive.

Missouri schools are evaluated on a five-year rotation, after which the reviewing team submits a report based on its findings to the State Board of Education. The district is then classified based on its performance.

Four state accreditation classifications are available: unaccredited, provisionally accredited, accredited and accredited with distinction in performance. In its first MSIP review, Scott City schools earned an accredited rating, which was the highest rating issued by the state at that time.

The school district received low ratings during last week's review because it lacks a full-time elementary school counselor and formal at-risk and gifted programs. Tatum said these findings were anticipated by administrators.

"One of our major problems is we do not have the room for a lot of these programs, but after we complete the new middle school, a lot of these problems will be solved," he said. "Most of the problems they found we already knew about; we just didn't have the room or the staff to do anything."

Architects are putting the finishing touches on the design for a new middle school within the district, which Tatum hopes will be ready for occupancy by January 1998. The school will ease spacing problems, he said, and allow the district to rectify most of the problems noted by the review team.

"We've hired at least six new teachers for next year, and we're trying to initiate formal at-risk and gifted programs as soon as we have the space available," he said. "Our target is the second semester for opening the new middle school, and after that we'll have the space to put some of these programs in."

A few minor concerns were also noted during the exit interview, but Tatum said they can be easily rectified. He said the district will perform consultations and make adjustments as needed about the proper height for posted safety signs, developing the core sequence in the home economics department and evaluating staff health services.

"These are some of the small things they found that we can fix pretty easily," Tatum said. "We've got a certain amount of time after we receive the final report to work with the concerns they name, but I want to get started on these things as early as possible."