KCPS, Hickman Mills fall short of full accreditation targets
Hickman Mills Superintendent Yolanda Cargile and Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Mark Bedell have been striving to get their districts fully accredited, but the state school board has said both will remain provisionally accredited in 2020.
The quest to regain full accreditation goes on in Kansas City Public Schools and the Hickman Mills School District.
The Missouri state school board decided this week that the two area districts will remain among eight districts statewide under provisional accreditation.
Both districts in recent years have reached overall scores in the state’s Annual Performance Report (APR) that qualified for full accreditation, but the state’s education commissioner and the state board have said the districts need to sustain the scores two to three years in succession to come off of provisional status.
School districts needed to earn at least 70% of the possible points in the state’s APR scoring to be eligible for full accreditation in past years. The state has replaced the percentile report with a color-coded system. The state can still calculate a percentile score, and this year, KCUR reported, KCPS earned 65.4% and Hickman Mills earned 60.8%.
Hickman Mills Superintendent Yolanda Cargile pledged to do what is necessary to finish the drive for full accreditation.
“Next steps for the district include focusing our attention on increasing academic performance for our students through continuous professional development for staff,” she said in a prepared statement. “We are also focused on increased attendance district wide and will need HMC-1 parents to assist by sending students to school daily. The district’s accreditation status will continue to be a combined effort, where school, home and community must collaborate in the best interest of children. Lastly, we will need to connect with DESE officials regarding the criteria to earn full accreditation status.“
LINC’s Caring Communities before- and after-school programming is collaborating with the national organization, Attendance Works, and HMC-1 to develop strategies to improve attendance.
Representatives from KCPS also attended Attendance Works in training sessions in Kansas City earlier this year.
KCPS’s journey to full accreditation suffered a setback in November when the district revealed that an independent investigation requested by the district showed that a group of KCPS staff between 2013 and 2016 had falsified attendance data to help the district earn more APR points.
A former staff member alerted the current district administration that the numbers had been falsified.
The inflated numbers also brought the district more funding from the state based on per-student allocations. The district announced this week it was returning nearly $200,000 to the state.
The falsified numbers occurred during the tenure of former Superintendent Steve Green, who told The Kansas City Star he was not aware that staff had inflated the data.
The investigation showed that no data had been inflated under current Superintendent Mark Bedell, and the district failed to earn attendance points in recent APR reports.
Bedell said KCPS staff is reviewing its APR report and will begin important public discussions at its Dec. 11 board meeting.
“We are taking time to review our data so that we can have a bigger conversation with our staff, families and community next week,” he said in a prepared statement. “We are looking forward to conveying our thoughts about the APR release to our staff, families and community then. We have much to celebrate along with our opportunities for growth.”
KCPS school board president Pattie Mansur said the board is eager to have these conversations.
“(The board) is eager to dive into the district’s APR data with Superintendent Bedell and the leadership team to examine where we are seeing successes and the areas that need greater attention,” she said. “We look forward to discussing the state’s required performance measures with district staff, families and community members and our progress toward full accreditation. Academic excellence is our central focus, and a commitment we take seriously on behalf of Kansas City's children."