The Elmwood Park District impressed the SchoolMatch Team in general, and the faculty, staff, administration and community seem positioned to move the district to the next level. Everyone we spoke with is interested in the district becoming a “flagship” district. The SchoolMatch Team believes that this can happen given a concerted, organized, consistent, strategic plan. The Team recommendation is that the SchoolMatch data and other academic information be used to help work through the current educational issues with the implementation of a formal “school community based” Strategic Plan. This plan must promote continuous improvement through the use of relevant data. The attitude and spirit of the leadership team towards continuous improvement and advancing student achievement is evident. Likewise there appears to be a sense of urgency to move the district forward beyond the status quo as evidenced by specific target areas for administrators and teachers and the willingness to gauge the progress of the district using data analysis and bench marking procedures. The district has an advanced level of technology available to students and faculty. The district and community are justly proud of the technology. The Team cautions the district to make sure the technology is used in a manner that enhances student performance in academic areas. The buildings and grounds are clean, neat and well maintained. The Team was very impressed with how the buildings and grounds look, especially given the age of the facilities. As a word of caution, the team did not see a plan to provide long-term maintenance plan for each of the buildings (e.g., plans to replace the windows with energy efficient ones, refurbish or replace the lockers, etc.) The number of AP courses and students enrolled in the courses is exceptional. The selection criteria used to assign students to AP classes should be studied to ensure that the high level of instruction and rigor associated with the courses is maintained resulting in a higher percentage of students scoring 3, 4, or 5 on the AP exams. Praise should be given for restoring the art and music programs to the elementary schools. Ideally, other specialist positions (i.e. physical education) should be considered as part of the strategic planning process. It also should be noted that there is not a full time librarian.
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